HISTORY  OF  A  LITERARY  RADICAL 

AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 


RANDOLPH  BOURNE 


Drawn  by  Arthur  G.  Dove  from  the 
•Death  Mask  by  James  Earle  Eraser 


BY    RANDOLPH     BOURNE 

HISTORY  OF  A 
LITERARY  RADICAL 

AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 


EDITED  WITH  AN  INTRODUCTION 

BY  VAN  WYCK  BROOKS 


"To  write  in  favor  of  that 
which  the  great  interests  of  the 
world  are  against  is  what  I 
conceive  to  be  the  duty  and  the 
privilege  of  the  intellectual." 

PADRAIC  COLUM 


NEW  YORK    B.W.  HUEBSCH      MCMXX 


COPYRIGHT,     1920,     B  Y   B.    W.    HUEBSCH,  INC. 
PRINTED    IN    U.  S.  A. 


13 

&>% 


j 


NOTE 


Most  of  the  papers  included  in  this  volume 
have  already  appeared  in  one  or  another  of  the 
following  magazines:  The  Atlantic  Monthly ', 
The  Dial,  The  New  Republic,  The  Seven  Arts, 
The  Tale  Review,  The  Columbia  University 
Quarterly,  and  are  reprinted  here  with  the  kind 
permission  of  the  editors. 


[v] 


R.  B. 

Bitter-sweet,  and  a  northwest  wind 

To  sing  his  requiem, 

Who  was 

Our  Age, 

And  who  becomes 

An  imperishable  symbol  of  our  ongoing, 

For  in  himself 

He  rose  above  his  body  and  came  among  us 

Prophetic  of  the  race, 

The  great  hater 

Of  the  dark  human  deformity 

Which  is  our  dying  world, 

The  great  lover 

Of  the  spirit  of  youth 

Which  is  our  future's  seed  .  .  . 

JAMES  OPPENHEIM. 


[vii] 


\ 


INTRODUCTION 

RANDOLPH  BOURNE  was  born  in  Bloomfield, 
New  Jersey,  May  30,  1886.  He  died  in  New 
York,  December  22,  1918.  Between  these  two 
dates  was  packed  one  of  the  fullest,  richest,  and 
most  significant  lives  of  the  younger  generation. 
Its  outward  events  can  be  summarized  in  a  few 
words.  Bourne  went  to  the  public  schools  in  his 
native  town,  and  then  for  some  time  earned  his 
living  as  an  assistant  to  a  manufacturer  of  auto 
matic  piano  music.  In  1909  he  entered  Colum 
bia,  graduating  in  1913  as  holder  of  the  Gilder 
Fellowship,  which  enabled  him  to  spend  a  year  of 
study  and  investigation  in  Europe.  In  1911  he 
had  begun  contributing  to  The  Atlantic  Monthly, 
and  his  first  book,  "Youth  and  Life,"  a  volume  of 
essays,  appeared^in  1913.  He  was  a  member  of 
the  contributing  staff  of  The  New  Republic 
during  its  first  three  years;  later  he  was  a  con 
tributing  editor  of  The  Seven  Arts  and  The 
[ix] 


Dial.  He  had  published,  in  addition  to  his  first 
collection  of  essays  and  a  large  number  of  mis 
cellaneous  articles  and  book  reviews,  two  other 
books,  "Education  and  Living"  and  "The  Gary 
Schools."  At  the  time  of  his  death  he  was  en 
gaged  on  a  novel  and  a  study  of  the  political 
future. 

It  might  be  guessed  from  this  that  Bourne  at 
thirty-two  had  not  quite  found  himself.  His  in 
terests  were  indeed  almost  universal:  he  had 
written  on  politics,  economics,  philosophy,  educa 
tion,  literature.  No  other  of  our  younger  critics 
had  cast  so  wide  a  net,  and  Bourne  had  hardly 
begun  to  draw  the  strings  and  count  and  sort  his 
catch.  He  was  a  working  journalist,  a  literary 
freelance  with  connections  often  of  the  most  pre 
carious  kind,  who  contrived,  by  daily  miracles  of 
'audacity  and  courage,  to  keep  himself  serenely 
afloat  in  a  society  where  his  convictions  prevented 
him  from  following  any  of  the  ordinary  avenues 
of  preferment  and  recognition.  It  was  a  feat 
never  to  be  sufficiently  marvelled  over;  it  would 
have  been  striking,  in  our  twentieth  century  New 
York,  even  in  the  case  of  a  man  who  was  not 
physically  handicapped  as  Bourne  was.  But  such 


a  life  is  inevitably  scattering,  and  it  was  only 
after  the  war  had  literally  driven  him  in  upon 
himself  that  he  set  to  work  at  the  systematic  har 
vesting  of  his  thoughts  and  experiences.  He  had 
not  quite  found  himself,  perhaps,  owing  to  the 
extraordinary  range  of  interests  for  which  he  had 
to  find  a  personal  common  denominator;  yet  no 
other  young  American  critic,  I  think,  had  exhibited 
so  clear  a  tendency,  so  coherent  a  body  of  desires. 
His  personality  was  not  only  unique,  it  was  also 
absolutely  expressive.  I  have  had  the  delightful 
experience  of  reading  through  at  a  sitting,  so  to 
say,  the  whole  mass  of  his  uncollected  writings, 
articles,  essays,  book  reviews,  unprinted  frag 
ments,  and  a  few  letters,  and  I  am  astonished  at 
the  way  in  which,  like  a  ball  of  camphor  in  a 
trunk,  the  pungent  savor  of  the  man  spreads  itself 
over  every  paragraph.  Here  was  no  anonymous 
reviewer,  no  mere  brilliant  satellite  of  the  radical 
movement  losing  himself  in  his  immediate  reac 
tions:  one  finds  everywhere,  interwoven  in  the 
fabric  of  his  work,  the  silver  thread  of  a  personal 
philosophy,  the  singing  line  of  an  intense  and 
beautiful  desire. 

What  was  that  desire?     It  was  for  a  new  fel- 
[xi] 


lowship  in  the  youth  of  America  as  the  principle 
of  a  great  and  revolutionary  departure  in  our 
life,  a  league  of  youth,  one  might  call  it,  con 
sciously  framed  with  the  purpose  of  creating,  out 
of  the  blind  chaos  of  American  society,  a  fine,  free, 
articulate  cultural  order.  That,  as  it  seems  to  me, 
was  the  dominant  theme  of  all  his  effort,  the  posi 
tive  theme  to  which  he  always  returned  from  his 
thrilling  forays  into  the  fields  of  education  and 
politics,  philosophy  and  sociology.  One  finds  it 
at  the  beginning  of  his  career  in  such  essays  as 
"Our  Cultural  Humility,"  one  finds  it  at  the  end 
in  the  "History  of  a  Literary  Radical."  One 
finds  it  in  that  pacifism  which  he  pursued  with  such 
an  obstinate  and  lonely  courage  and  which  was 
the  logical  outcome  of  the  checking  and  thwarting 
of  those  currents  of  thought  and  feeling  in  which 
he  had  invested  the  whole  passion  of  his  life. 
Place  aux  jeunes  might  have  been  his  motto:  he 
seemed  indeed  the  flying  wedge  of  the  younger 
generation  itself. 

I  shall  never  forget  my  first  meeting  with  him, 
that  odd  little  apparition  with  his  vibrant  eyes, 
his  quick,  birdlike  steps  and  the  long  black  stu 
dent's  cape  he  had  brougkt  back  with  him  from 
[xii] 


Paris.  It  was  in  November,  1914,  and  we  never 
imagined  then  that  the  war  was  going  to  be  more 
than  a  slash,  however  deep,  across  the  face  of 
civilization,  we  never  imagined  it  was  going  to 
plough  on  and  on  until  it  had  uprooted  and  turned 
under  the  soil  so  many  green  shoots  of  hope  and 
desire  in  the  young  world.  Bourne  had  published 
that  radiant  book  of  essays  on  the  Adventure  of 
Life,  the  Two  Generations,  the  Excitement  of 
Friendship,  with  its  happy  and  confident  sugges 
tion  of  the  present  as  a  sort  of  transparent  veil 
hung  up  against  the  window  of  some  dazzling 
future,  he  had  had  his  wanderyear  abroad,  and 
had  come  home  with  that  indescribable  air  of  the 
scholar-gypsy,  his  sensibility  fresh,  clairvoyant, 
matutinal,  a  philosopher  of  the  gaya  scienza^  his 
hammer  poised  over  the  rock  of  American  philist- 
inism,  with  never  a  doubt  in  his  heart  of  the 
waters  of  youth  imprisoned  there.  One  divined 
him  in  a  moment,  the  fine,  mettlesome  temper  of 
his  intellect,  his  curiosity,  his  acutely  critical  self- 
consciousness,  his  aesthetic  flair,  his  delicate  sense 
of  personal  relationships,  his  toughness  of  fiber, 
his  masterly  powers  of  assimilation,  his  grasp  of 
reality,  his  burning  convictions,  his  beautifully 


precise  desires.  Here  was  Emerson's  "American 
scholar"  at  last,  but  radiating  an  infinitely 
warmer,  profaner,  more  companionable  influence 
than  Emerson  had  ever  dreamed  of,  an  influence 
that  savored  rather  of  Whitman  and  William 
James.  He  was  the  new  America  incarnate, 
with  that  stamp  of  a  sort  of  permanent  youthful- 
ness  on  his  queer,  twisted,  appealing  face.  You 
felt  that  in  him  the  new  America  had  suddenly 
found  itself  and  was  all  astir  with  the  excitement 
of  its  first  maturity. 

His  life  had  prepared  him  for  the  role,  for  the 
physical  disability  that  had  cut  him  off  from  the 
traditional  currents  and  preoccupations  of  Amer 
ican  life  had  given  him  a  poignant  insight  into 
the  predicament  of  all  those  others  who,  like  him, 
could  not  adjust  themselves  to  the  industrial 
machine — the  exploited,  the  sensitive,  the  de 
spised,  the  aspiring,  those,  in  short,  to  whom  a 
new  and  very  different  America  was  no  academic 
idea  but  a  necessity  so  urgent  that  it  had  begun  to 
be  a  reality.  As  detached  as  any  young  East 
Sider  from  the  herd-unity  of  American  life,  the 
colonial  tradition,  the  "genteel  tradition,"  yet 
passionately  concerned  with  America,  passionately 
[xiv] 


caring  for  America,  he  had  discovered  himself  at 
Columbia,  where  so  many  strains  of  the  newer 
immigrant  population  meet  one  another  in  the 
full  flood  and  ferment  of  modern  ideas.  Shut  in 
as  he  had  been  with  himself  and  his  books,  what 
dreams  had  passed  through  his  mind  of  the  pos 
sibilities  of  life,  of  the  range  of  adventures  that 
are  open  to  the  spirit,  of  some  great  collective 
effort  of  humanity !  Would  there  never  be  room 
for  these  things  in  America,  was  it  not  precisely 
the  task  of  the  young  to  make  room  for  them"? 
Bourne's  grandfather  and  great-grandfather  had 
been  doughty  preachers  and  reformers :  he  had  in 
herited  a  certain  religious  momentum  that  thrust 
him  now  into  the  midst  of  the  radical  tide.  Above 
all,  he  had  found  companions  who  helped  him  to 
clarify  his  ideas  and  grapple  with  his  aims.  Im 
migrants,  many  of  them,  of  the  second  generation, 
candidates  for  the  "melting-pot"  that  had  simply 
failed  to  melt  them,  they  trailed  with  them  a 
dozen  rich,  diverse  racial  and  cultural  tendencies 
which  America  seemed  unable  either  to  assimilate 
or  to  suppress.  Were  they  not,  these  newcomers 
of  the  eleventh  hour,  as  clearly  entitled  as  the  first 
colonials  had  been  to  a  place  in  the  sun  of  the 

[XV] 


great  experimental  democracy  upon  which  they 
were  making  such  strange  new  demands'?  They 
wanted  a  freer  emotional  life,  a  more  vivid  in 
tellectual  life;  oddly  enough,  it  was  they  and  not 
the  hereditary  Americans,  the  "people  of  action," 
who  spoke  of  an  "American  culture"  and  de 
manded  it.  Bourne  had  found  his  natural  allies. 
Intensely  Anglo-Saxon  himself,  it  was  America 
he  cared  for,  not  the  triumph  of  the  Anglo-Saxon 
tradition  which  had  apparently  lost  itself  in  the 
pursuit  of  a  mechanical  efficiency.  It  was  a 
"trans-national"  America  of  which  he  caught 
glimpses  now,  a  battleground  of  all  the  cultures, 
a  super-culture,  that  might  perhaps,  by  some 
happy  chance,  determine  the  future  of  civilization 
itself. 

It  was  with  some  such  vision  as  this  that  he  had 
gone  abroad.  If  that  super-culture  was  ever  to 
come  it  could  only  be  through  some  prodigious 
spiritual  organization  of  the  youth  of  America, 
some  organization  that  would  have  to  begin  with 
small  and  highly  self-conscious  groups;  these 
groups,  moreover,  would  have  to  depend  for  a 
long  time  upon  the  experience  of  young  Europe. 
The  very  ideas  of  spiritual  leadership,  the  intel- 
[xvi] 


lectual  life,  the  social  revolution  were  foreign  to  a 
modern  America  that  had  submitted  to  the  com 
mon  mould  of  business  enterprise;  even  philos 
ophers  like  Professor  Dewey  had  had  to  assume  a 
protective  coloration,  and  when  people  spoke  of 
art  they  had  to  justify  it  as  an  "asset."  For 
Bourne,  therefore,  the  European  tour  was  some 
thing  more  than  a  preparation  for  his  own  life: 
he  was  like  a  bird  in  the  nesting  season,  gathering 
twigs  and  straw  for  a  nest  that  was  not  to  be  his 
but  young  America's,  a  nest  for  which  old  America 
would  have  to  provide  the  bough!  He  was  in 
search,  in  other  words,  of  new  ideas,  new  attitudes, 
new  techniques,  personal  and  social,  for  which  he 
was  going  to  demand  recognition  at  home,  and  it 
is  this  that  gives  to  his  "Impressions  of  Europe 
1913-1914" — his  report  to  Columbia  as  holder 
of  the  Gilder  Fellowship — an  actuality  that  so 
perfectly  survives  the  war.  Where  can  one  find 
anything  better  in  the  way  of  social  insight  than 
his  pictures  of  radical  France,  of  the  ferment  of 
the  young  Italian  soul,  of  the  London  intellectuals 
— Sidney  Webb,  lecturing  "with  the  patient  air 
of  a  man  expounding  arithmetic  to  backward 
children,"  Shaw,  "clean,  straight,  clear,  and  fine 
[  xvii  ] 


as  an  upland  wind  and  summer  sun,"  Chesterton, 
"gluttonous  and  thick,  with  something  tricky  and 
unsavory  about  him";  of  the  Scandinavian  note, 
— "one  got  a  sense  in  those  countries  of  the  most 
advanced  civilization,  yet  without  sophistication, 
a  luminous  modern  intelligence  that  selected  and 
controlled  and  did  not  allow  itself  to  be  over 
whelmed  by  the  chaos  of  twentieth  century  pos 
sibility"1?  We  see  things  in  that  white  light  only 
when  they  have  some  deeply  personal  meaning 
for  us,  and  Bourne's  instinct  had  led  him  straight 
to  his  mark.  Two  complex  impressions  he  had 
gained  that  were  to  dominate  all  his  later  work. 
One  was  the  sense  of  what  a  national  culture  is, 
of  its  immense  value  and  significance  as  a  source 
and  fund  of  spiritual  power  even  in  a  young  world 
committed  to  a  political  and  economic  inter 
nationalism.  The  other  was  a  keen  realization 
of  the  almost  apostolic  role  of  the  young  student 
class  in  perpetuating,  rejuvenating,  vivifying 
and,  if  need  be,  creating  this  national  conscious 
ness.  No  young  Hindu  ever  went  back  to  India, 
no  young  Persian  or  Ukrainian  or  Balkan  student 
ever  went  home  from  a  European  year  with  a 
more  fervent  sense  of  the  chaos  and  spiritual 
[  xviii  ] 


stagnation  and  backwardness  of  his  own  people, 
of  the  happy  responsibility  laid  upon  himself  and 
all  those  other  young  men  and  women  who  had 
been  touched  by  the  modern  spirit. 

It  was  a  tremendous  moment.  Never  had  we 
realized  so  keenly  the  spiritual  inadequacy  of 
American  life :  the  great  war  of  the  cultures  left  us 
literally  gasping  in  the  vacuum  of  our  own 
provincialism,  colonialism,  naivete,  and  romantic 
self-complacency.  We  were  in  much  the  same 
position  as  that  of  the  Scandinavian  countries 
during  the  European  wars  of  1866-1870,  if  we 
are  to  accept  George  Brandes'  description  of  it: 
"While  the  intellectual  life  languished,  as  a  plant 
droops  in  a  close,  confined  place,  the  people  were 
self-satisfied.  They  rested  on  their  laurels  and 
fell  into  a  doze.  And  while  they  dozed  they  had 
dreams.  The  cultivated,  and  especially  the  half- 
cultivated,  public  in  Denmark  and  Norway 
dreamed  that  they  were  the  salt  of  Europe.  They 
dreamed  that  by  their  idealism  they  would  re 
generate  the  foreign  nations.  They  dreamed  that 
they  were  the  free,  mighty  North,  which  would 
lead  the  cause  of  the  peoples  to  victory — and  they 
woke  up  unfree,  impotent,  ignorant."  It  was 
[xix] 


through  a  great  effort  of  social  introspection  that 
Scandinavia  had  roused  itself  from  the  stupor  of 
this  optimistic  idealism,  and  at  last  a  similar 
movement  was  on  foot  in  America.  The  New 
Republic  had  started  with  the  war,  The  Masses 
was  still  young,  The  Seven  Arts  and  the  new 
Dial  were  on  the  horizon.  Bourne  found  himself 
instantly  in  touch  with  the  purposes  of  all  these 
papers,  which  spoke  of  a  new  class-consciousness, 
a  sort  of  offensive  and  defensive  alliance  of  the 
younger  intelligentsia  and  the  awakened  elements 
of  the  labor  groups.  His  audience  was  awaiting 
him,  and  no  one  could  have  been  better  prepared 
to  take  advantage  of  it. 

It  was  not  merely  the  exigencies  of  journalism 
that  turned  his  mind  at  first  so  largely  to  the  prob 
lems  of  primary  education.  In  Professor  Dewey's 
theories,  in  the  Gary  Schools,  he  saw,  as  he  could 
see  it  nowhere  else,  the  definite  promise,  the  actual 
unfolding  of  the  freer,  more  individualistic,  and 
at  the  same  time  more  communistic  social  life  of 
which  he  dreamed.  But  even  if  he  had  not  come 
to  feel  a  certain  inadequacy  in  Professor  Dewey's 
point  of  view,  I  doubt  if  this  field  of  interest  could 
have  held  him  long.  Children  fascinated  him; 

[XX] 


how  well  he  understood  them  we  can  see  from  his 
delightful  "Ernest:  or  Parent  for  a  Day."  But 
Bourne's  heart  was  too  insistently  involved  in  the 
situation  of  his  own  contemporaries,  in  the  stress 
of  their  immediate  problems,  to  allow  him  to 
linger  in  these  long  hopes.  This  young  intelli 
gentsia  in  whose  ultimate  unity  he  had  had  such 
faith — did  he  not  see  it,  moreover,  as  the  war 
advanced,  lapsing,  falling  apart  again,  reverting 
into  the  ancestral  attitudes  of  the  tribe*?  Granted 
the  war,  it  was  the  business  of  these  liberals  to  see 
that  it  was  played,  as  he  said,  "with  insistent  care 
for  democratic  values  at  home,  and  unequivocal 
alliance  with  democratic  elements  abroad  for  a 
peace  that  should  promise  more  than  a  mere  union 
of  benevolent  imperialisms."  Instead,  the  "allure 
of  the  martial"  passed  only  to  be  succeeded  by  the 
"allure  of  the  technical,"  and  the  "prudent,  en 
lightened  college  man,"  cut  in  the  familiar  pat 
tern,  took  the  place  of  the  value-creator,  the  path 
finder,  the  seeker  of  new  horizons.  Plainly,  the 
younger  generation  had  not  begun  to  find  its  own 
soul,  had  hardly  so  much  as  registered  its  will  for 
a  new  orientation  of  the  American  spirit. 

Had  it  not  occurred  before,  this  general  rever- 
[xxi] 


sion  to  type  ?  The  whole  first  phase  of  the  social 
movement  had  spent  itself  in  a  sort  of  ineffectual 
beating  of  the  air,  and  Bourne  saw  that  only 
through  a  far  more  heroic  effort  of  criticism  than 
had  yet  been  attempted  could  the  young  intelli 
gentsia  disentangle  itself,  prevail  against  the  mass- 
fatalism  of  the  middle  class,  and  rouse  the  workers 
out  of  their  blindness  and  apathy.  Fifteen  years 
ago  a  new  breath  had  blown  over  the  American 
scene;  people  felt  that  the  era  of  big  business  had 
reached  its  climacteric,  that  a  new  nation  was 
about  to  be  born  out  of  the  social  settlements,  out 
of  the  soil  that  had  been  harrowed  and  swept  by 
the  muck-rakers,  out  of  the  spirit  of  service  that 
animated  a  whole  new  race  of  novelists,  and  a 
vast  army  of  young  men  and  young  women,  who 
felt  fluttering  in  their  souls  the  call  to  some  great 
impersonal  adventure,  went  forth  to  the  slums 
and  the  factories  and  the  universities  with  a 
powerful  but  very  vague  desire  to  realize  them 
selves  and  to  "dosojnething''  for  the  world.  But 
one  would  have  said  that  movement  had  been 
born  middle-aged,  so  earnest,  so  anxious,  so  con 
scientious,  so  troubled,  so  maternal  and  paternal 
were  the  faces  of  those  young  men  and  women 


who  marched  forth  with  so  puzzled  an  intrepidity; 
there  was  none  of  the  tang  and  fire  of  youth  in  it, 
none  of  the  fierce  glitter  of  the  intellect;  there  was 
no  joyous  burning  of  boats;  there  were  no  trans 
figurations,  no  ecstasies.  There  was  only  a  warm 
simmer  of  eager,  evangelical  sentiment  that  some 
how  never  reached  the  boiling-point  and  cooled 
rapidly  off  again,  and  that  host  of  tentative  and 
wistful  seekers  found  themselves  as  cruelly  astray 
as  the  little  visionaries  of  the  Children's  Crusade. 
Was  not  the  failure  of  that  movement  due  almost 
wholly  to  its  lack  of  critical  equipment?  In  the 
first  place,  it  was  too  naive  and  too  provincial,  it 
was  outside  the  main  stream  of  modern  activity 
and  desire,  it  had  none  of  the  reserves  of  power 
that  result  from  being  in  touch  with  contemporary 
developments  in  other  countries.  In  the  second 
place,  it  had  no  realistic  sense  of  American  life: 
it  ignored  the  facts  of  the  class  struggle,  it  ac 
cepted  enthusiastically  illusions  like  that  of  the 
"melting-pot,"  it  wasted  its  energy  in  attacking 
"bad"  business  without  realizing  that  the  spirit  of 
business  enterprise  is  itself  the  great  enemy,  it 
failed  to  see  the  need  of  a  consciously  organized 
intellectual  class  or  to  appreciate  the  necessary 
[  xxiii  ] 


conjunction  in  our  day  of  the  intellectuals  and 
the  proletariat.  Worst  of  all,  it  had  no  personal 
psychology.  Those  crusaders  of  the  "social  con 
sciousness"  were  far  from  being  conscious  of  them 
selves;  they  had  never  broken  the  umbilical  cord 
of  their  hereditary  class,  they  had  not  discovered 
their  own  individual  lines  of  growth,  they  had  no 
knowledge  of  their  own  powers,  no  technique  for 
using  them  effectively.  Embarked  in  activities 
that  instantly  revealed  themselves  as  futile  and 
fallacious,  they  also  found  their  loyalties  in  per 
petual  conflict  with  one  another.  Inevitably  their 
zeal  waned  and  their  energy  ebbed  away,  and  the 
tides  of  uniformity  and  commercialism  swept  the 
American  scene  once  more. 

No  one  had  grasped 'all  these  elements  of  the 
social  situation  so  firmly  as  Bourne.  He  saw  that 
we  needed,  first,  a  psychological  interpretation  of 
these  younger  malcontents,  secondly,  a  realistic 
study  of  our  institutional  life,  and  finally,  a  gen 
eral  opening  of  the  American  mind  to  the  currents 
of  contemporary  desire  and  effort  and  experiment 
abroad.  And  along  each  of  these  lines  he  did  the 
work  of  a  pioneer. 

Who,  for  example,  had  ever  thought  of  explor- 
[  xxiv  ] 


ing  the  soul  of  the  younger  generation  as  Bourne 
explored  it?  He  had  planned  a  long  series  of 
literary  portraits  of  its  types  and  personalities: 
half  a  dozen  of  them  exist  (along  with  several 
of  quite  a  different  character! — the  keenest 
satires  we  have),  enough  to  show  us  how  sensi 
tively  he  responded  to  those  detached,  groping, 
wistful,  yet  resolutely  independent  spirits  whom 
he  saw  weaving  the  iridescent  fabric  of  the  future. 
He  who  had  so  early  divined  the  truth  of  Maurice 
Barres'  saying,  that  we  never  conquer  the  intellec 
tual  suffrages  of  those  who  precede  us  in  life,  ad 
dressed  himself  exclusively  to  these  young  spirits : 
he  went  out  to  meet  them,  he  probed  their  obscuri 
ties;  one  would  have  said  that  he  was  a  sort  of 
impresario  gathering  the  personnel  of  some  im 
mense  orchestra,  seeking  in  each  the  principle  of 
his  own  growth.  He  had  studied  his  chosen 
minority  with  such  instinctive  care  that  everything 
he  wrote  came  as  a  personal  message  to  those,  and 
those  alone,  who  were  capable  of  assimilating  it; 
and  that  is  why,  as  we  look  over  his  writings  to 
day,  we  find  them  a  sort  of  corpus,  a  text  full  of 
secret  ciphers,  and  packed  with  meaning  between 
the  lines,  of  all  the  most  intimate  questions  and 
[  xxv  ] 


difficulties  and  turns  of  thought  and  feeling  that 
make  up  the  soul  of  young  America.  He  re 
vealed  us  to  ourselves,  he  intensified  and  at  the 
same  time  corroborated  our  desires;  above  all,  he 
showed  us  what  we  had  in  common  and  what  new 
increments  of  life  might  jrifif  p"t  ^  ^  function 
of  our  differences.  In  these  portraits  he  was  al 
ready  doing  the  work  of  the  novelist  he  might  well 
have  become, — he  left  two  or  three  chapters  of  a 
novel  he  had  begun  to  write,  in  which  "Karen" 
and  "Sophronisba"  and  "The  Professor"  would 
probably  have  appeared,  along  with  a  whole 
battle-array  of  the  older  and  younger  generations; 
he  was  sketching  out  the  role  some  novelist  might 
play  in  the  parturition  of  the  new  America. 
Everything  for  analysis,  for  self-discovery,  for 
articulation,  everything  to  put  the  younger  gen 
eration  in  possession  of  itself!  Everything  to 
weave  the  tissue  of  a  common  understanding,  to 
help  the  growth  and  freedom  of  the  spirit !  There 
was  something  prophetic  in  Bourne's  personality. 
In  his  presence  one  felt,  in  his  writings  one  realizes, 
that  the  army  of  youth  is  already  assembling  for 
"the  effort  of  reason  and  the  adventure  of  beauty." 
I  shall  say  little  of  his  work  as  a  critic  of  in- 
[  xx  vi  ] 


stitutions.  It  is  enough  to  point  out  that  if  such 
realistic  studies  as  his  "Trans-National  America" 
and  his  "Mirror  of  the  Middle  West"  (a  perfect 
example,  by  the  way,  of  his  theory  of  the  book 
review  as  an  independent  enquiry  with  a  central 
idea  of  its  own),  his  papers  on  the  settlements 
and  on  sociological  fiction  had  appeared  fifteen 
years  ago,  a  vastly  greater  amount  of  effective 
energy  might  have  survived  the  break-up  of  the 
first  phase  of  the  social  movement.  When  he 
showed  what  mare's-nests  the  settlements  and  the 
"melting-pot"  theory  and  the  "spirit  of  service" 
are,  and  what  snares  for  democracy  lie  in  Meredith 
Nicholson's  "folksiness,"  he  closed  the  gate  on 
half  the  blind  alleys  in  which  youth  had  gone 
astray;  and  he  who  had  so  delighted  in  Veblen's 
ruthless  condensation  of  the  mystical  gases  of 
American  business  implied  in  every  line  he  wrote 
that  there  is  a  gulf  fixed  between  the  young  in 
tellectual  and  the  unreformable  "system."  The 
young  intellectual,  henceforth,  was  an  unclassed 
outsider,  with  a  scent  all  the  more  keenly  sharp 
ened  for  new  trails  because  the  old  trails  were 
denied  him,  and  for  Bourne  those  new  trails  led 
straight,  and  by  the  shortest  possible  route,  to  a 
[  xxvii  ] 


society  the  very  reverse  of  ours,  a  society  such  as 
A.E.  has  described  in  the  phrase,  "democratic  in 
economics,  aristocratic  in  thought,"  to  be  attained 
through  a  coalition  of  the  thinkers  and  the  work 
ers.  The  task  of  the  thinkers,  of  the  intelli 
gentsia,  in  so  far  as  they  concerned  themselves  di 
rectly  with  economic  problems,  was,  in  Bourne's 
eyes,  chiefly  to  think.  It  was  a  new  doctrine  for 

American  radicals;  it  precisely  denoted  their  ad- 

f 

vance  over  the  evangelicism  of  fifteen  years  ago. 
"The  young  radical  to-day,"  he  wrote  in  one  of  his 
reviews,  "is  not  asked  to  be  a  martyr,  but  he  is 
asked  to  be  a  thinker,  an  intellectual  leader.  .  .  . 
The  labor  movement  in  this  country  needs  a 
philosophy,  a  literature,  a  constructive  socialist 
analysis  and  criticism  of  industrial  relations. 
Labor  will  scarcely  do  this  thinking  for  itself. 
Unless  middle-class  radicalism  threshes  out  its 
categories  and  interpretations  and  undertakes  this 
constructive  thought  it  will  not  be  done.  .  .  .  The 
only  way  by  which  middle-class  radicalism  can 
serve  is  by  being  fiercely  and  concentratedly  in 
tellectual." 

Finally,  through  Bourne  more  than  through  any 
Other  of  our  younger  writers  one  gained  a  sense  of 
[  xxviii  ] 


the  stir  of  the  great  world,  of  the  currents  and 
cross-currents  of  the  contemporary  European 
spirit,  behind  and  beneath  the  war,  of  the  ten 
dencies  and  experiences  and  common  aims  and 
bonds  of  the  younger  generation  everywhere.  He 
was  an  exception  to  what  seems  to  be  the  general 
rule,  that  Americans  who  are  able  to  pass  outside 
their  own  national  spirit  at  all  are  apt  to  fall 
headlong  into  the  national  spirit  of  some  one  other 
country:  'they  become  vehement  partisans  of 
Latin  Europe,  or  of  England,  or  of  Germany 
and  Scandinavia,  or,  more  recently,  of  Russia. 
Bourne,  with  that  singular  union  of  detachment 
and  affectionate  penetration  which  he  brought  also 
to  his  personal  relationships,  had  entered  them  all 
with  an  equal  curiosity,  an  impartial  delight.  If 
he  had  absorbed  the  fine  idealism  of  the  English 
liberals,  he  understood  also  the  more  elemental, 
the  more  emotional,  the  more  positive  urge  of 
revolutionary  Russia.  He  was  full  of  practical 
suggestions  from  the  vast  social  and  economic 
laboratory  of  modern  Germany.  He  had  caught 
something  also  from  the  intellectual  excitement 
of  young  Italy;  most  of  all,  his  imagination  had 
been  captivated,  as  we  can  see  from  such  essays  as 
[  xxix  ] 


"Mon  Amie,"  by  the  candor  and  the  self-conscious 
ness  and  the  genius  for  social  introspection  of 
radical  France.  And  all  these  influences  were 
perpetually  at  play  in  his  mind  and  in  his  writings. 
He  was  the  conductor  of  innumerable  diverse  in 
spirations,  a  sort  of  clearing-house  of  the  best 
living  ideas  of  the  time;  through  him  the  young 
writer  and  the  young  thinker  came  into  instant 
contact  with  whatever  in  the  modern  world  he 
most  needed.  And  here  again  Bourne  revealed 
his  central  aim.  He  reviewed  by  choice,  and  with 
a  special  passion,  what  he  called  the  "epics  of 
youthful  talent  that  grows  great  with  quest  and 
desire."  It  is  easy  to  see,  in  his  articles  on  such 
books  as  "Pelle  the  Conqueror"  and  Gorky's 
Autobiography  and  "The  Ragged-Trousered 
Philanthropists,"  that  what  lured  him  was  the 
common  struggle  and  aspiration  of  youth  and 
poverty  and  the  creative  spirit  everywhere,  the 
sense  of  a  new  socialized  world  groping  its  way 
upward.  It  was  this  rich  ground-note  in  all  his 
work  that  made  him,  not  the  critic  merely,  but  the 
leader. 

It  is  impossible  to  say,  of  course,  what  he  would 
have  become  if  his  life  had  been  spared.     The 
[  xxx  ] 


war  had  immensely  stimulated  his  "political- 
mindedness" :  he  was  obsessed,  during  the  last 
two  years  of  his  life,  with  a  sense  of  the  precari- 
ousness  of  free  thought  and  free  speech  in  this 
country;  if  they  were  cut  off,  he  foresaw,  the 
whole  enterprise,  both  of  the  social  revolution  and 
of  the  new  American  culture,  would  perish  of 
inanition;  he  felt  himself  at  bay.  Would  he, 
with  all  the  additional  provocation  of  a  hopelessly 
bungled  peace  settlement,  have  continued  in  the 
political  field,  as  his  unfinished  study  on  "The 
State"  might  suggest*?  Or  would  that  activity, 
while  remaining  vivid  and  consistent,  have  sub 
sided  into  a  second  place  behind*  his  more  purely 
cultural  interests'? 

Personally,  I  like  to  think  that  he  would  have 
followed  this  second  course.  He  speaks  in  the 
"History  of  a  Literary  Radical"  of  "living  down 
the  new  orthodoxies  of  propaganda"  as  he  and 
his  friends  had  lived  down  the  old  orthodoxies  of 
the  classics,  and  I  believe  that,  freed  from  the 
obsessions  of  the  war,  his  criticism  would  have 
concentrated  more  and  more  on  the  problem  of 
evoking  and  shaping  an  American  literature  as 
the  nucleus  of  that  rich,  vital  and  independent 
[  xxxi  ] 


national  life  he  had  been  seeking  in  so  many  ways 
to  promote.  Who  that  knew  his  talents  could 
have  wished  it  otherwise?  Already,  except  for 
the  poets,  the  intellectual  energy  of  the  younger 
generation  has  been  drawn  almost  exclusively  into 
political  interests;  and  the  new  era,  which  has 
begun  to  draw  so  sharply  the  battle-line  between 
radicals  and  reactionaries,  is  certain  only  to  in 
crease  this  tendency.  If  our  literary  criticism  is 
always  impelled  sooner  or  later  to  become  social 
criticism,  it  is  certainly  because  the  future  of  our 
literature  and  art  depends  upon  the  wholesale  re 
construction  of  a  social  life  all  the  elements  of 
which  are  as  if  united  in  a  sort  of  conspiracy 
against  the  growth  and  freedom  of  the  spirit:  we 
are  in  the  position  described  by  Ibsen  in  one  of 
his  letters:  "I  do  not  think  it  is  of  much  use  to 
plead  the  cause  of  art  with  arguments  derived 
from  its  own  nature,  which  with  us  is  still  so 
little  understood,  or  rather  so  thoroughly  misun 
derstood.  .  .  .  My  opinion  is  that  at  the  present 
time  it  is  of  no  use  to  wield  one's  weapons  for 
art;  one  must  simply  turn  them  against  what  is 
hostile  to  art."  That  is  why  Bourne,  whose  ulti 
mate  interest  was  always  artistic,  found  himself  a 
[  xxxii  ] 


guerilla  fighter  along  the  whole  battlefront  of  the 
social  revolution.  He  was  drawn  into  the  polit 
ical  arena  as  a  skilful  specialist,  called  into  war 
service,  is  drawn  into  the  practice  of  a  general 
surgery  in  which  he  may  indeed  accomplish  much 
but  at  the  price  of  the  suspension  of  his  own 
uniqueness.  Others,  at  the  expiration  of  what 
was  for  him  a  critical  moment,  the  moment  when 
all  freedom  seemed  to  be  at  stake,  might  have 
been  trusted  to  do  his  political  work  for  him;  the 
whole  radical  tide  was  flowing  behind  him;  his 
unique  function,  meanwhile,  was  not  political  but 
spiritual.  It  was  the  creation,  the  communication 
of  what  he  called  "the  allure  of  fresh  and  true 
ideas,  of  free  speculation,  of  artistic  vigor,  of  cul 
tural  styles,  of  intelligence  suffused  by  feeling  and 
feeling  given  fiber  and  outline  by  intelligence." 
Was  it  not  to  have  been  hoped,  therefore,  that  he 
would  have  revived,  exemplified  among  these  new 
revolutionary  conditions,  and  on  behalf  of  them, 
the  lapsed  role  of  the  man  of  letters'? 

For  if  he  held  a  hammer  in  one  hand,  he  held 

in  the  other  a  divining-rod.     He,  if  any  one,  in 

the  days  to  come,  would  have  conjured  out  of  our 

dry  soil  the  green  shoots  of  a  beautiful  and  a 

[  xxxiii  ] 


characteristic  literature :  he  knew  that  soil  so  well, 
and  why  it  was  dry,  and  how  it  ought  to  be  irri 
gated!  We  have  had  no  chart  of  our  cultural 
situation  to  compare  with  his  "History  of  a 
Literary  Radical,"  and  certainly  no  one  has  com 
bined  with  an  analytical  gift  like  his,  and  an 
adoration  for  the  instinct  of  workmanship,  so 
burning  an  eye  for  every  stir  of  life  and  color  on 
the  drab  American  landscape.  I  think  of  a 
sentence  in  one  of  his  reviews :  "The  appearance 
of  dramatic  imagination  in  any  form  in  this  coun 
try  is  something  to  make  us  all  drop  our  work  and 
run  to  see."  That  was  the  spirit  which  animated 
all  his  criticism:  is  it  not  the  spirit  that  creates 
out  of  the  void  the  thing  it  contemplates  ? 

To  have  known  Randolph  Bourne  is  indeed  to 
have  surprised  some  of  the  finest  secrets  of  the 
American  future.  But  those  who  lived  with  him 
in  friendship  will  remember  him  for  reasons  that 
are  far  more  personal,  and  at  the  same  time  far 
more  universal,  than  that:  they  will  remember  him 
as  the  wondrous  companion,  the  lyrical  intellect, 
the  transparent  idealist,  most  of  all  perhaps  as  the 
ingenuous  and  lonely  child.  It  is  said  that  every 
writer  possesses  in  his  vocabulary  one  talismanic 
[  xxxiv  ] 


word  which  he  repeats  again  and  again,  half  un 
consciously,  like  a  sort  of  signature,  and  which 
reveals  the  essential  secret  of  his  personality.  In 
Bourne's  case  the  word  is  "wistful";  and  those 
who  accused  him  of  malice  and  bitterness,  not 
realizing  how  instinctively  we  impute  these  quali 
ties  to  the  physically  deformed  who  are  so  daunt 
less  in  spirit  that  they  repel  our  pity,  would  do 
well  to  consider  that  secret  signature,  sown  like 
some  beautiful  wild  flower  over  the  meadow  of 
his  writings,  which  no  man  can  counterfeit, 
which  is  indeed  the  token  of  their  inviolable  sin 
cerity.  He  was  a  wanderer,  the  child  of  some 
nation  yet  unborn,  smitten  with  an  inappeasable 
"nostalgia  for  the  Beloved  Community  on  the  far 
side  of  socialism,  he  carried  with  him  the  intoxi 
cating  air  of  that  community,  the  mysterious 
aroma  of  all  its  works  and  ways.  "High  philo 
sophic  thought  infused  with  sensuous  love,"  he 
wrote  once,  "is  not  this  the  one  incorrigible  dream 
that  clutches  us?"  It  was  the  dream  he  had 
brought  back  from  the  bright  future  in  which  he 
lived,  the  dream  he  summoned  us  to  realize.  And 
it  issues  now  like  a  gallant  command  out  of  the 
space  left  vacant  by  his  passing. 

VAN  WYCK  BROOKS. 
[  xxxv  ] 


CONTENTS 

INTRODUCTION,  ix 

HISTORY  OF  A  LITERARY  RADICAL,  i 
OUR  CULTURAL  HUMILITY,  31 
Six  PORTRAITS,  45 

FIRST— KAREN,  47 

SECOND — SOPHRONISBA,  57 

THIRD — MON  AMIE,  66 

FOURTH — FERGUS,  82 

FIFTH — THE  PROFESSOR,  91 

SIXTH — ONE  OF  OUR  CONQUERORS,  98 
THIS  OLDER  GENERATION,  107 
A  MIRROR  OF  THE  MIDDLE  WEST,  128 
ERNEST:  OR  PARENT  FOR  A  DAY,  140 
ON  DISCUSSION,  168 
THE  PURITAN'S  WILL  TO  POWER,  176 
THE  IMMANENCE  OF  DOSTOEVSKY,  188 
THE  ART  OF  THEODORE  DREISER,  195 
THE  USES  OF  INFALLIBILITY,  205 
IMPRESSIONS  OF  EUROPE,  1913-14,  230 
TRANS-NATIONAL  AMERICA,  266 
FRAGMENT  OF  A  NOVEL,  300 


HISTORY  OF  A  LITERARY  RADICAL 

FOR  a  man  of  culture,  my  friend  Miro  began  his 
literary  career  in  a  singularly  unpromising  way. 
Potential  statesmen  in  log-cabins  might  miracul 
ously  come  in  touch  with  all  the  great  books  of  the 
world,  but  the  days  of  Miro's  young  school  life 
were  passed  in  innocence  of  Homer  or  Dante  or 
Shakespeare,  or  any  of  the  other  traditional  mind- 
formers  of  the  race.  What  Miro  had  for  his 
nourishment,  outside  the  Bible,  which  was  a 
magical  book  that  you  must  not  drop  on  the  floor, 
or  his  school-readers,  which  were  like  lightning 
flashes  of  unintelligible  scenes,  was  the  literature 
that  his  playmates  lent  him — exploits  of  British 
soldiers  in  Spain  and  the  Crimea,  the  death-defy 
ing  adventures  of  young  filibusters  in  Cuba  and 
Nicaragua.  Miro  gave  them  a  languid  perusing, 
and  did  not  criticize  their  literary  style.  Huckle 
berry  Finn  and  Tom  Sawyer  somehow  eluded  him 
until  he  had  finished  college,  and  no  fresher  tale  of 

to 


adventure  drifted  into  his  complacent  home  until 
the  era  of  "Richard  Carvel"  and  "Janice  Mere 
dith"  sharpened  his  wits  and  gave  him  a  vague 
feeling  that  there  was  such  a  thing  as  literary  art. 
The  classics  were  stiffly  enshrined  behind  glass 
doors  that  were  very  hard  to  open — at  least  Haw 
thorne  and  Irving  and  Thackeray  were  there,  and 
Tennyson's  and  Scott's  poems — but  nobody  ever 
discussed  them  or  looked  at  them.  Miro's  busy 
elders  were  taken  up  with  the  weekly  Outlook  and 
Independent  and  Christian  Work,  and  felt  they 
were  doing  much  for  Miro  when  they  provided 
him  and  his  sister  with  St.  Nicholas  and  The 
Youth's  Companion.  It  was  only  that  Miro  saw 
the  black  books  looking  at  him  accusingly  from 
the  case,  and  a  rudimentary  conscience,  slipping 
easily  over  from  Calvinism  to  culture,  forced  him 
solemnly  to  grapple  with  "The  Scarlet  Letter"  or 
"Marmion."  All  he  remembers  is  that  the  writers 
of  these  books  he  browsed  among  used  a  great 
many  words  and  made  a  great  fuss  over  shadowy 
offenses  and  conflicts  and  passions  that  did  not 
even  stimulate  his  imagination  with  sufficient 
force  to  cause  him  to  ask  his  elders  what  it  was  all 
about.  Certainly  the  filibusters  were  easier. 

[2] 


At  school  Miro  was  early  impressed  with  the 
vast  dignity  of  the  literary  works  and  names  he 
was  compelled  to  learn.  Shakespeare  and  Goethe 
and  Dante  lifted  their  plaster  heads  frowningly 
above  the  teacher's,  as  they  perched  on  shelves 
about  the  room.  Much  was  said  of  the  greatness 
of  literature.  But  the  art  of  phonetics  and  the 
complications  of  grammar  swamped  Miro's  early 
school  years.  It  was  not  until  he  reached  the 
High  School  that  literature  began  really  to  as 
sume  that  sacredness  which  he  had  heretofore  felt 
only  for  Holy  Scripture.  His  initiation  into  cul 
ture  was  made  almost  a  religious  mystery  by  the 
conscientious  and  harassed  teacher.  As  the  Dead- 
wood  Boys  and  Henty  and  David  Harum  slipped 
away  from  Miro's  soul  in  the  presence  of  Milton's 
"Comus"  and  Burke  "On  Conciliation,"  a  cultural 
devoutness  was  engendered  in  him  that  never 
really  died.  At  first  it  did  not  take  Miro  beyond 
the  stage  where  your  conscience  is  strong  enough  to 
make  you  uncomfortable,  but  not  strong  enough  to 
make  you  do  anything  about  it.  Miro  did  not 
actually  become  an  omnivorous  reader  of  great 
books.  But  he  was  filled  with  a  rich  grief  that 
the  millions  pursued  cheap  and  vulgar  fiction  in- 

[3] 


stead  of  the  best  that  has  been  thought  and  said  in 
the  world.  Miro  indiscriminately  bought  cheap 
editions  of  the  English  classics  and  read  them 
with  a  certain  patient  incomprehension. 

As  for  the  dead  classics,  they  came  to  Miro  from 
the  hands  of  his  teachers  with  a  prestige  even 
vaster  than  the  books  of  his  native  tongue.  No 
doubt  ever  entered  his  head  that  four  years  of 
Latin  and  three  years  of  Greek,  an  hour  a  day, 
were  the  important  preparation  he  needed  for  his 
future  as  an  American  citizen.  No  doubt  ever 
hurt  him  that  the  world  into  which  he  would  pass 
would  be  a  world  where,  as  his  teacher  said,  Latin 
and  Greek  were  a  solace  to  the  aged,  a  quickener  of 
taste,  a  refreshment  after  manual  labor,  and  a  clue 
to  the  general  knowledge  of  all  human  things. 
Miro  would  as  soon  have  doubted  the  rising  of  the 
sun  as  have  doubted  the  wisdom  of  these  serious, 
puckered  women  who  had  the  precious  manipula 
tion  of  his  cultural  upbringing  in  their  charge. 
Miro  was  a  bright,  if  a  rather  vague,  little  boy, 
and  a  fusion  of  brightness  and  docility  gave  him 
high  marks  in  the  school  where  we  went  together. 

No  one  ever  doubted  that  these  marks  expressed 
Miro's  assimilation  of  the  books  we  pored  over. 

[4] 


But  he  told  me  later  that  he  had  never  really 
known  what  he  was  studying.  Caesar,  Virgil, 
Cicero,  Xenophon,  Homer,  were  veiled  and  misty 
experiences  to  him.  His  mind  was  a  moving  pres 
ent,  obliterating  each  day  what  it  had  read  the  day 
before,  and  piercing  into  a  no  more  comprehended 
future.  He  could  at  no  time  have  given  any  in 
telligible  account  of  ^Eneas's  wanderings  or  what 
Cicero  was  really  inveighing  against.  The  Iliad 
was  even  more  obscure.  The  only  thing  which 
impressed  him  deeply  was  an  expurgated  passage, 
which  he  looked  up  somewhere  else  and  found  to 
be  about  Mars  and  Venus  caught  in  the  golden 
bed.  Csesar  seemed  to  be  at  war,  and  Xenophon 
wandering  somewhere  in  Asia  Minor,  with  about 
the  same  lengthiness  and  hardship  as  Miro  suffered 
in  reading  him.  The  trouble,  Miro  thought  after 
wards,  was  that  these  books  were  to  his  mind 
flickering  lights  in  a  vast  jungle  of  ignorance.  He 
does  not  remember  marvelling  at  the  excessive 
dulness  of  the  stories  themselves.  He  plodded 
his  faithful  way,  using  them  as  his  conscientious 
teachers  did,  as  exercises  in  language.  He  looked 
on  Virgil  and  Cicero  as  essentially  problems  in  dis 
entangling  words  which  had  unaccountably  gotten 

[5] 


into  a  bizarre  order,  and  in  recognizing  certain 
rather  amusing  and  ingenious  combinations,  known 
as  "constructions."  Why  these  words  took  so 
irritating  an  order  Miro  never  knew,  but  he  always 
connected  the  problem  with -those  algebraic  puz 
zles  he  had  elsewhere  to  unravel.  Virgil's  words 
were  further  complicated  by  being  arranged  in 
lines  which  one  had  to  "scan."  Miro  was  pleased 
with  the  rhythm,  and  there  were  stanzas  that  had 
a  roll  of  their  own.  But  the  inexorable  trans 
lating  that  had  to  go  on  tore  all  this  fabric  of 
poetry  to  pieces.  His  translations  were  impecca 
ble,  but,  as  he  never  wrote  them  down,  he  had 
*  never  before  his  eyes  the  consecutive  story. 

Translations  Miro  never  saw.  He  knew  that 
they  were  implements  of  deadly  sin  that  boys  used 
to  cheat  with.  His  horror  of  them  was  such  as  a 
saint  might  feel  towards  a  parody  of  the  Bible. 
Just  before  Miro  left  school,  his  sister  in  a  younger 
class  began  to  read  a  prose  translation  of  the 
Odyssey,  and  Miro  remembers  the  scorn  with 
which  he  looked  down  on  so  sneaking  an  entrance 
into  the  temple  of  light.  He  knew  that  not  every 
one  could  study  Latin  and  Greek,  and  he  learned 
to  be  proud  of  his  knowledge.  When  at  last  he 

[6] 


had  passed  his  examinations  for  college — his 
Latin  composition  and  grammar,  his  syntax  and 
his  sight-reading,  and  his  Greek  composition  and 
grammar,  his  Greek  syntax  and  sight-reading,  and 
his  translation  of  Gallic  battles  and  Anabatic 
frosts,  and  Dido's  farewell  and  Cicero's  objurga 
tions — his  zealous  rage  did  not  abate.  He  even 
insisted  on  reading  the  Bucolics,  while  he  was 
away  on  his  vacation,  and  a  book  or  two  in  the 
Odyssey.  His  family  was  a  little  chilled  by  his 
studiousness,  but  he  knew  well  that  he  was  laying 
up  cultural  treasures  in  heaven,  where  moth  and 
rust  do  not  corrupt,  neither  do  thieves  break 
in  and  steal. 

Arrived  at  college,  Miro  expanded  his  cultural 
interests  on  the  approved  lines.  He  read  Horace 
and  Plato,  Lysias  and  Terence,  impartially,  with 
faithful  conscience.  Horace  was  the  most  excit 
ing  because  of  the  parodies  that  were  beginning  to 
appear  in  the  cleverer  newspapers.  Miro  scarcely 
knew  whether  to  be  amused  or  shocked  at  "Odi 
Persicos"  or  "Integer  Vitse"  done  into  current 
slang.  The  professors,  mild-mannered  men  who 
knew  their  place  and  kept  it,  never  mentioned 
these  impudent  adventures,  but  for  Miro  it  was 

[7] 


the  first  crack  in  his  Ptolemaic  system  of  rever 
ences.  There  came  a  time  when  his  mind  began 
to  feel  replete,  when  this  heavy  pushing  through 
the  opaque  medium  of  dead  language  began  to  fa 
tigue  him.  He  should  have  been  able  to  read  flu 
ently,  but  there  were  always  turning  up  new  styles, 
new  constructions,  to  plague  him.  Latin  became 
to  him  like  a  constant  diet  of  beefsteak,  and 
Greek  like  a  constant  diet  of  fine  wheaten  bread. 
They  lost  their  taste.  These  witty  poets  and  os 
tentatious  orators — what  were  they  all  about? 
What  was  their  background?  Where  did  they  fit 
into  Miro's  life?  The  professors  knew  some  his 
tory,  but  what  did  that  history  mean?  Miro 
found  himself  surfeited  and  dissatisfied.  He  be 
gan  to  look  furtively  at  translations  to  get  some 
better  English  than  he  was  able  to  provide.  The 
hair-splittings  of  Plato  began  to  bore  him  when 
he  saw  them  in  crystal-clear  English,  and  not  muf 
fled  in  the  original  Greek.  His  apostasy  had  be 
gun. 

It  was  not  much  better  in  his  study  of  English 
literature.  Miro  was  given  a  huge  anthology,  a 
sort  of  press-clipping  bureau  of  belles-lettres,  from 
Chaucer  to  Arthur  Symons.  Under  the  direction 

[8] 


of  a  professor  who  was  laying  out  a  career  for 
himself  as  poet — or  "modern  singer,"  as  he  ex 
pressed  it — the  class  went  briskly  through  the  cen 
turies  sampling  their  genius  and  tasting  the  vari 
ous  literary  flavors.  The  enterprise  reminded 
Miro  of  those  books  of  woollen  samples  which  one 
looks  through  when  one  is  to  have  a  suit  of  clothes 
made.  But  in  this  case,  the  student  did  not  even 
have  the  pleasure  of  seeing  the  suit  of  clothes. 
All  that  was  expected  of  him,  apparently,  was  that 
he  should  become  familiar,  from  these  microscopic 
pieces,  with  the  different  textures  and  patterns. 
The  great  writers  passed  before  his  mind  like  fig 
ures  in  a  crowded  street.  There  was  no  time  for 
preferences.  Indeed  the  professor  strove  dili 
gently  to  give  each  writer  his  just  due.  How  was 
one  to  appreciate  the  great  thoughts  and  the  great 
styles  if  one  began  to  choose  violently  between 
them,  or  attempt  any  discrimination  on  grounds 
of  their  peculiar  congeniality  for  one's  own  soul^ 
Criticism  had  to  spurn  such  subjectivity,  scholar 
ship  could  not  be  wilful.  The  neatly  arranged 
book  of  "readings,"  with  its  medicinal  doses  of 
inspiration,  became  the  symbol  of  Miro's  educa 
tion. 

[9] 


These  early  years  of  college  did  not  deprive 
Miro  of  his  cultural  loyalty,  but  they  deadened  his 
appetite.  Although  almost  inconceivably  docile, 
he  found  himself  being  bored.  He  had  come 
from  school  a  serious  boy,  with  more  than  a  touch 
of  priggishness  in  him,  and  a  vague  aspiration  to 
be  a  "man  of  letters."  He  found  himself  becom 
ing  a  collector  of  literary  odds-and-ends.  If  he 
did  not  formulate  this  feeling  clearly,  he  at  least 
knew.  He  found  that  the  literary  life  was  not  as 
interesting  as  he  had  expected.  He  sought  no  ad 
ventures.  When  he  wrote,  it  was  graceful  lyrics 
or  polite  criticisms  of  William  Collins  or  Charles 
Lamb.  These  canonized  saints  of  culture  still 
held  the  field  for  Miro,  however.  There  was 
nothing  between  them  and  that  popular  literature 
of  the  day  that  all  good  men  bemoaned.  Classic 
or  popular,  "highbrow"  or  "lowbrow,"  this  was 
the  choice,  and  Miro  unquestioningly  took  the  or 
thodox  heaven.  In  1912  the  most  popular  of 
Miro's  English  professors  had  never  heard  of  Gals 
worthy,  and  another  was  creating  a  flurry  of  scan 
dal  in  the  department  by  recommending  Chester 
ton  to  his  classes.  It  would  scarcely  have  been 
in  college  that  Miro  would  have  learned  of  an 

[10] 


escape  from  the  closed  dichotomy  of  culture. 
Bored  with  the  "classic,"  and  frozen  with  horror 
at  the  "popular,"  his  career  as  a  man  of  culture 
must  have  come  to  a  dragging  end  if  he  had  not 
been  suddenly  liberated  by  a  chance  lecture  which 
he  happened  to  hear  while  he  was  at  home  for  the 
holidays. 

The  literary  radical  who  appeared  before  the  Ly 
ceum  Club  of  Miro's  village  was  none  other  than 
Professor  William  Lyon  Phelps,  and  it  is  to  that 
evening  of  cultural  audacity  Miro  thinks  he  owes 
all  his  later  emancipation.  The  lecturer  grap 
pled  with  the  "modern  novel,"  and  tossed  Hardy, 
Tolstoi,  Turgenev,  Meredith,  even  Trollope,  into 
the  minds  of  the  charmed  audience  with  such  ef 
fect  that  the  virgin  shelves  of  the  village  library 
were  ravished  for  days  to  come  by  the  eager  minds 
upon  whom  these  great  names  dawned  for  the  first 
time.  "Jude  the  Obscure"  and  "Resurrection" 
were  of  course  kept  officially  away  from  the  vul 
gar,  but  Miro  managed  to  find  "Smoke"  and 
"Virgin  Soil"  and  "Anna  Karenina"  and  "The 
Warden"  and  "A  Pair  of  Blue  Eyes"  and  "The 
Return  of  the  Native."  Later  at  college  he  ex 
plored  the  forbidden  realms.  It  was  as  if  some 


devout  and  restless  saint  had  suddenly  been  intro 
duced  to  the  Apocrypha.  A  new  world  was 
opened  to  Miro  that  was  neither  "classic"  nor 
"popular,"  and  yet  which  came  to  one  under  the 
most  unimpeachable  auspices.  There  was,  at 
first,  it  is  true,  an  air  of  illicit  adventure  about  the 
enterprise.  The  lecturer  who  made  himself  the 
missionary  of  such  vigorous  and  piquant  doctrine 
had  the  air  of  being  a  heretic,  or  at  least  a  boy 
playing  out-  of  school.  But  Miro  himself  re 
turned  to  college  a  cultural  revolutionist.  His 
orthodoxies  crumbled.  He  did  not  try  to  recon 
cile  the  new  with  the  old.  He  applied  pick  and 
dynamite  to  the  whole  structure  of  the  canon. 
Irony,  humor,  tragedy,  sensuality,  suddenly  ap 
peared  to  him  as  literary  qualities  in  forms  that 
he  could  understand.  They  were  like  oxygen  to 
his  soul. 

If  these  qualities  were  in  the  books  he  had  been 
reading,  he  had  never  felt  them.  The  expur 
gated  sample-books  he  had  studied  had  passed  too 
swiftly  over  the  Elizabethans  to  give  him  a  sense 
of  their  lustiness.  Miro  immersed  himself  volup 
tuously  in  the  pessimism  of  Hardy.  He  fed  on 
the  poignant  torture  of  Tolstoi.  While  he  was 

[12] 


reading  "Resurrection,"  his  class  in  literature  was 
making  an  ' 'intensive"  study  of  Tennyson.  It 
was  too  much.  Miro  rose  in  revolt.  He  for 
swore  literary  courses  forever,  dead  rituals  in 
which  anaemic  priests  mumbled  their  trite  critical 
commentary.  Miro  did  not  know  that  to  naugh 
tier  critics  even  Mr.  Phelps  might  eventually  seem 
a  pale  and  timid  Gideon,  himself  stuck  in  moral 
sloughs.  He  was  grateful  enough  for  that  blast 
of  trumpets  which  made  his  own  scholastic  walls 
fall  down. 

The  next  stage  in  Miro's  cultural  life  was  one 
of  frank  revolt.  He  became  as  violent  as  a  here 
tic  as  he  had  been  docile  as  a  believer.  Modern 
novels  merely  started  the  rift  that  widened  into 
modern  ideas.  The  professors  were  of  little  use. 
Indeed,  when  Miro  joined  a  group  of  radicals  who 
had  started  a  new  college  paper,  a  relentless  ven 
detta  began  with  the  teachers.  Miro  and  his 
friends  threw  over  everything  that  was  mere  lit 
erature.  Social  purpose  must  shine  from  any 
writing  that  was  to  rouse  their  enthusiasm.  Lit 
erary  flavor  was  to  be  permissible  only  where  it 
made  vivid  high  and  revolutionary  thought. 
[Tolstoi  became  their  god,  Wells  their  high  priest. 

[13] 


Chesterton  infuriated  them.  They  wrote  violent 
assaults  upon  him  which  began  in  imitation  of  his 
cool  paradoxical ity  and  ended  in  incoherent  rav 
ings.  There  were  so  many  enemies  to  their  new 
fervor  that  they  scarcely  knew  where  to  begin. 
There  were  not  only  the  old  tables  of  stone  to 
destroy,  but  there  were  new  and  threatening 
prophets  of  the  eternal  verities  who  had  to  be 
exposed.  The  nineteenth  century  which  they  had 
studied  must  be  weeded  of  its  nauseous  moralists. 
The  instructors  consulted  together  how  they  might 
put  down  the  revolt,  and  bring  these  sinners  back 
to  the  faith  of  cultural  scripture. 

It  was  of  no  avail.  In  a  short  time  Miro  had 
been  converted  from  an  aspiration  for  the  career 
of  a  cultivated  "man  of  letters"  to  a  fiery  zeal  for 
artistic  and  literary  propaganda  in  the  service  of 
radical  ideas.  One  of  the  results  of  this  conver 
sion  was  the  discovery  that  he  really  had  no  stand 
ards  of  critical  taste.  Miro  had  been  reverential 
so  long  that  he  had  felt  no  preferences.  Every 
thing  that  was  classic  had  to  be  good  to  him. 
But  now  that  he  had  thrown  away  the  books  that 
were  stamped  with  the  mark  of  the  classic  mint, 
and  was  dealing  with  the  raw  materials  of  letters, 


he  had  to  become  a  critic  and  make  selection.  It 
was  not  enough  that  a  book  should  be  radical. 
Some  of  the  books  he  read,  though  impeccably 
revolutionary  as  to  ideas,  were  clearly  poor  as  lit 
erature.  His  muffled  taste  began  to  assert  itself. 
He  found  himself  impressionable  where  before  he 
had  been  only  mildly  acquisitive.  The  literature 
of  revolt  and  free  speculation  fired  him  into  a  state 
of  spiritual  explosiveness.  All  that  he  read  now 
stood  out  in  brighter  colors  and  in  sharper  outlines 
than  before.  As  he  reached  a  better  balance,  he 
began  to  feel  the  vigor  of  literary  form,  the  value 
of  sincerity  and  freshness  of  style.  He  began  to 
look  for  them  keenly  in  everything  he  read.  It 
was  long  before  Miro  realized  that  enthusiasm  not 
docility  had  made  him  critical.  He  became  a  lit 
tle  proud  of  his  sensitive  and  discriminating  reac 
tions  to  the  modern  and  the  unsifted. 

This  pursuit  had  to  take  place  without  any  help 
from  the  college.  After  Miro  graduated,  it  is  true 
that  it  became  the  fashion  to  study  literature  as  the 
record  of  ideas  and  not  merely  as  a  canon  of  sa 
cred  books  to  be  analyzed,  commented  upon,  and 
absorbed.  But  no  dent  was  made  upon  the  sys 
tem  in  Miro's  time,  and,  the  inventory  of  English 

[15] 


criticism  not  going  beyond  Stevenson,  no  college 
course  went  beyond  Stevenson.  The  Elizabeth 
ans  had  been  exhumed  and  fumigated,  but  the 
most  popular  attention  went  to  the  gallery  of  Vic 
torians,  who  combined  moral  soundness  with  lit 
erary  beauty,  and  were  therefore  considered  whole 
some  food  for  young  men.  The  instructors  all 
remained  in  the  state  of  reverence  which  saw  all 
things  good  that  had  been  immemorially  taught. 
Miro's  own  teacher  was  a  fragile,  earnest  young 
man,  whose  robuster  parents  had  evidently  seized 
upon  his  nature  as  a  fortunate  pledge  of  what  the 
family  might  produce  in  the  way  of  an  intellec 
tual  flower  that  should  surpass  in  culture  and  gen 
tility  the  ambitions  of  his  parents.  His  studious- 
ness,  hopeless  for  his  father's  career  as  grocer,  had 
therefore  been  capitalized  into  education. 

The  product  now  shone  forth  as  one  of  the  most 
successful  and  promising  younger  instructors  in 
the  department.  He  knew  his  subject.  Card-in 
dexes  filled  his  room,  covering  in  detail  the  works, 
lives,  and  deaths  of  the  illustrious  persons  whom 
he  expounded,  as  well  as  everything  that  had  been 
said  about  them  in  the  way  of  appreciation  or 
interpretation.  An  endless  number  of  lectures 

[16] 


and  courses  could  be  made  from  this  bountiful 
store.  He  never  tried  to  write  himself,  but  he 
knew  all  about  the  different  kinds  of  writing,  and 
when  he  corrected  the  boys'  themes  he  knew  infal 
libly  what  to  tell  them  to  avoid.  Miro's  vagaries 
scandalized  his  teacher  all  the  more  because  during 
his  first  year  in  college  Miro  had  been  generally 
noticed  as  one  with  the  proper  sobriety  and  schol 
arly  patience  to  graduate  into  a  similar  priestly 
calling.  Miro  found  scant  sympathy  in  the 
young  man.  To  the  latter,  literary  studies  were  a 
science  not  an  art,  and  they  were  to  be  treated 
with  somewhat  the  same  cold  rigor  of  delimitation 
and  analysis  as  any  other  science.  Miro  felt  his 
teacher's  recoil  at  the  idea  that  literature  was  sig 
nificant  only  as  the  expression  of  personality  or 
as  interpretation  of  some  social  movement.  Miro 
saw  how  uneasy  he  became  when  he  was  con 
fronted  with  current  literature.  It  was  clear  that 
Miro's  slowly  growing  critical  sense  had  not  a 
counterpart  in  the  scholastic  mind. 

When  Miro  and  his  friends  abandoned  literary 
studies,  they  followed  after  the  teachers  of  history 
and  philosophy,  intellectual  arenas  of  which  the 
literary  professors  seemed  scandalously  ignorant. 

[17] 


At  this  ignorance  Miro  boiled  with  contempt. 
Here  were  the  profitable  clues  that  would  give 
meaning  to  dusty  literary  scholarship,  but  the 
scholars  had  not  the  wits  to  seize  them.  They 
lived  along,  playing  what  seemed  to  Miro  a  rather 
dreary  game,  when  they  were  not  gaping  rever 
ently  at  ideas  and  forms  which  they  scarcely  had 
the  genuine  personality  to  appreciate.  Miro  felt 
once  and  for  all  free  of  these  mysteries  and  rever 
ences.  He  was  to  know  the  world  as  it  has  been 
and  as  it  is.  He  was  to  put  literature  into  its 
proper  place,  making  all  "culture"  serve  its  ap 
prenticeship  for  him  as  interpretation  of  things 
larger  than  itself,  of  the  course  of  individual  lives 
and  the  great  tides  of  society. 

Miro's  later  cultural  life  is  not  without  interest. 
When  he  had  finished  college  and  his  architectural 
course,  and  was  making  headway  in  his  profession, 
his  philosophy  of  the  intellectual  life  began  to 
straighten  itself  out.  Rapid  as  his  surrender  of 
orthodoxy  had  been,  it  had  taken  him  some  time 
to  live  down  that  early  education.  He  found  now 
that  he  would  have  to  live  down  his  heresies  also, 
and  get  some  coherent  system  of  tastes  that  was  his 


own  and  not  the  fruit  of  either  docility  or  the 
zeal  of  propaganda. 

The  old  battles  that  were  still  going  on  helped 
Miro  to  realize  his  modern  position.  It  was  a 
queer,  musty  quarrel,  but  it  was  enlisting  minds 
from  all  classes  and  of  all  intellectual  fibers.  The 
"classics"  were  dying  hard,  as  Miro  recognized 
whenever  he  read,  in  the  magazines,  attacks  on 
the  "new  education."  He  found  that  professors 
were  still  tak>en  seriously  who  declared  in  passion 
that  without  the  universal  study  of  the  Latin  lan 
guage  in  American  schools  all  conceptions  of 
taste,  standards,  criticism,  the  historic  sense  itself, 
would  vanish  from  the  earth.  He  found  that 
even  as  late  as  1917  professional  men  were  gath 
ering  together  in  solemn  conclave  and  buttressing 
the  "value  of  the  classics"  with  testimonials  from 
"successful  men"  in  a  variety  of  vocations.  Miro 
was  amused  at  the  fact  that  the  mighty  studies 
once  pressed  upon  him  so  uncritically  should  now 
require,  like  the  patent  medicines,  testimonials  as 
to  their  virtue.  Bank  presidents,  lawyers,  and 
editors  had  taken  the  Latin  language  regularly 
for  years,  and  had  found  its  effects  painless  and 


invigorating.  He  could  not  escape  the  uncon 
scious  satire  that  such  plump  and  prosperous  Amer 
icans  expressed  when  they  thought  it  admirable  to 
save  their  cherished  intellectual  traditions  in  any 
such  fashion. 

Other  conservatives  Miro  saw  to  be  abandon 
ing  the  line  of  opposition  to  science,  only  to  fall 
back  on  the  line  of  a  defensive  against  "pseudo- 
science,"  as  they  seemed  to  call  whatever  intellec 
tual  interests  had  not  yet  become  indubitably  rep 
utable.  It  was  a  line  which  would  hold  them 
rather  strongly  for  a  time,  Miro  thought,  because 
so  many  of  the  cultural  revolutionists  agreed 
with  them  in  hating  some  of  these  arrogant  and 
mechanical  psychologies  and  sociologies  that  re 
duced  life  to  figures  or  organisms.  But  Miro  felt 
also  how  obstructive  was  their  fight.  If  the 
"classics"  had  done  little  for  him  except  to  hold 
his  mind  in  an  uncomprehending  prison,  and  fet 
ter  his  spontaneous  taste,  they  seemed  to  have  done 
little  more  for  even  the  thorough  scholars.  When 
professors  had  devoted  scholarly  lives  to  the 
"classics"  only  to  exhibit  in  their  own  polemics 
none  of  the  urbanity  and  intellectual  command 
which  weje  supposed  by  the  believer  somehow  to 

[20] 


rub  off  automatically  on  the  faithful  student, 
Miro  had  to  conclude  an  absence  of  causal  connec 
tion  between  the  "classics"  and  the  able  modern 
mind.  When,  moreover,  critical  power  or  crea 
tive  literary  work  became  almost  extinct  among 
these  defenders  of  the  "old  education,"  Miro  felt 
sure  that  a  revolution  was  needed  in  the  materials 
and  attitudes  of  "culture." 

The  case  of  the  defenders  was  all  the  weaker  be 
cause  their  enemies  were  not  wanton  infidels,  ig 
norant  of  the  holy  places  they  profaned.  They 
were  rather  cultural  "Modernists,"  reforming  the 
church  from  within.  They  had  the  classic  back 
ground,  these  young  vandals,  but  they  had  es 
caped  from  its  flat  and  unoriented  surface. 
Abreast  of  the  newer  objective,  impersonal  stand 
ards  of  thinking,  they  saw  the  weakness  of  these 
archaic  minds  which  could  only  appeal  to  vested 
interests  in  culture  and  testimonials  from  success 
ful  men. 

The  older  critics  had  long  since  disavowed  the 
intention  of  discriminating  among  current  writers. 
These  men,  who  had  to  have  an  Academy  to  pro 
tect  them,  lumped  the  younger  writers  of  verse 
and  prose  together  as  "anarchic"  and 

[21] 


tic,"  and  had  become,  in  these  latter  days,  merely 
peevish  and  querulous,  protesting  in  favor  of 
standards  that  no  longer  represented  our  best  val 
ues.  Every  one,  in  Miro's  time,  bemoaned  the 
lack  of  critics,  but  the  older  critics  seemed  to  have 
lost  all  sense  of  hospitality  and  to  have  become 
tired  and  a  little  spitefully  disconsolate,  while  the 
newer  ones  were  too  intent  on  their  crusades 
against  puritanism  and  philistinism  to  have  time 
I  for  a  constructive  pointing  of  the  way. 

Miro  had  a  very  real  sense  of  standing  at  the 
end  of  an  era.     He  and  his  friends  had  lived  down 

Iboth  their  old  orthodoxies  of  the  classics  and  their 
new  orthodoxies  of  propaganda.  Gone  were  the 
priggishness  and  self -consciousness  which  had 
marked  their  teachers.  The  new  culture  would 
be  more  personal  than  the  old,  but  it  would  not  be 
held  as  a  personal  property.  It  would  be  demo 
cratic  in  the  sense  that  it  would  represent  each 
person's  honest  spontaneous  taste.  The  old  atti 
tude  was  only  speciously  democratic.  The  as 
sumption  was  that  if  you  pressed  your  material 
long  enough  and  winningly  enough  upon  your  cul- 
turable  public,  they  would  acquire  it.  But  the 
material  was  something  handed  down,  not  grown 

[22] 


in  the  garden  of  their  own  appreciations.  Under 
these  conditions  the  critic  and  appreciator  became 
a  mere  impersonal  register  of  orthodox  opinion. 
The  cultivated  person,  in  conforming  his  judg 
ments  to  what  was  authoritatively  taught  him, 
was  really  a  member  of  the  herd — a  cultivated 
herd,  it  is  true,  but  still  a  herd.  It  was  the  mass 
that  spoke  through  the  critic  and  not  his  own  dis 
crimination.  These  authoritative  judgments 
might,  of  course,  have  come — probably  had  come 
— to  the  herd  through  discerning  critics,  but  in 
Miro's  time  judgment  in  the  schools  had  petrified. 
One  believed  not  because  one  felt  the  original  dis 
cernment,  but  because  one  was  impressed  by  the 
weight  and  reputability  of  opinion.  At  least  so 
it  seemed  to  Miro. 

Now  just  as  the  artists  had  become  tired  of  con 
ventions  and  were  breaking  through  into  new  and 
personal  forms,  so  Miro  saw  the  younger  critics 
breaking  through  these  cultural  conventions.  To 
the  elders  the  result  would  seem  mere  anarchy. 
But  Miro's  attitude  did  not  want  to  destroy,  it 
merely  wanted  to  rearrange  the  materials.  He 
wanted  no  more  second-hand  appreciations.  No 
one's  cultural  store  was  to  include  anything  that 

[23] 


one  could  not  be  enthusiastic  about.  One's  ac 
quaintance  with  the  best  that  had  been  said  and 
thought  should  be  encouraged — in  Miro's  ideal 
school — to  follow  the  lines  of  one's  temperament. 
Miro,  having  thrown  out  the  old  gods,  found  them 
slowly  and  properly  coming  back  to  him.  Some 
would  always  repel  him,  others  he  hoped  to  un 
derstand  eventually.  But  if  it  took  wisdom  to 
write  the  great  books,  did  it  not  also  take  wis 
dom  to  understand  them?  Even  the  Latin  writ 
ers  he  hoped  to  recover,  with  the  aid  of  transla 
tions.  But  why  bother  with  Greek  when  you 
could  get  Euripides  in  the  marvellous  verse  of 
Gilbert  Murray?  Miro  was  willing  to  believe 
that  no  education  was  complete  without  at  least 
an  inoculation  of  the  virus  of  the  two  orthodoxies 
that  he  was  transcending. 

As  Miro  looked  around  the  American  scene,  he 
wondered  where  the  critics  were  to  come  from. 
He  saw,  on  the  one  hand,  Mr.  Mencken  and  Mr. 
Dreiser  and  their  friends,  going  heavily  forth  to 
battle  with  the  Philistines,  glorying  in  pachyder 
matous  vulgarisms  that  hurt  the  polite  and  culti 
vated  young  men  of  the  old  school.  And  he  saw 
these  violent  critics,  in  their  rage  against  puritan- 

[24] 


ism,  becoming  themselves  moralists,  with  the  same 
bigotry  and  tastelessness  as  their  enemies.  No, 
these  would  never  do.  On  the  other  hand,  he  saw 
Mr.  Stuart  P.  Sherman,  in  his  youthful  if  some 
what  belated  ardor,  revolting  so  conscientiously 
against  the  "naturalism"  and  crude  expression  of 
current  efforts  that,  in  his  defense  of  belles-lettres^ 
of  the  fine  tradition  of  literary  art,  he  himself  be 
came  a  moralist  of  the  intensest  brand,  and  as 
critic  plumped  for  Arnold  Bennett,  because  that 
clever  man  had  a  feeling  for  the  proprieties  of  hu 
man  conduct.  No,  Mr.  Sherman  would  do  even 
less  adequately.  His  fine  sympathies  were  as 
much  out  of  the  current  as  was  the  specious  clas 
sicism  of  Professor  Shorey.  He  would  have  to 
look  for  the  critics  among  the  young  men  who  had 
an  abounding  sense  of  life,  as  well  as  a  feeling  for 
literary  form.  They  would  be  men  who  had  not 
been  content  to  live  on  their  cultural  inheritance, 
but  had  gone  out  into  the  modern  world  and 
amassed  a  fresh  fortune  of  their  own.  They 
would  be  men  who  were  not  squeamish,  who  did 
not  feel  the  delicate  differences  between  "animal" 
and  "human"  conduct,  who  were  enthusiastic 
about  Mark  Twain  and  Gorki  as  well  as  Remain 

[25] 


Holland,  and  at  the  same  time  were  thrilled  by 
Copeau's  theater. 

Where  was  a  better  program  for  culture,  for 
any  kind  of  literary  art?  Culture  as  a  living  ef 
fort,  a  driving  attempt  both  at  sincere  expression 
and  at  the  comprehension  of  sincere  expression 
wherever  it  was  found !  Appreciation  to  be  as  far 
removed  from  the  "I  know  what  I  like !"  as  from 
the  textbook  impeccability  of  taste!  If  each 
mind  sought  its  own  along  these  lines,  would  not 
many  find  themselves  agreed?  Miro  insisted  on 
liking  Amy  Lowell's  attempt  to  outline  the  ten 
dencies  in  American  poetry  in  a  form  which  made 
clear  the  struggles  of  contemporary  men  and 
women  with  the  tradition  and  against  "every  affec 
tation  of  the  mind."  He  began  to  see  in  the  new 
class-consciousness  of  poets  the  ending  of  that  old 
division  which  "culture"  made  between  the  chosen 
people  and  the  gentiles.  We  were  now  to  form 
little  pools  of  workers  and  appreciators  of  similar 
temperaments  and  tastes.  The  little  magazines 
that  were  starting  up  became  voices  for  these  new 
communities  of  sentiment.  Miro  thought  that 
perhaps  at  first  it  was  right  to  adopt  a  tentative 
superciliousness  towards  the  rest  of  the  world,  so 

[26] 


that  both  Mr.  Mencken  with  his  shudders  at  the 
vulgar  Demos  and  Mr.  Sherman  with  his  obsession 
with  the  sanely  and  wholesomely  American  might 
be  shut  out  from  influence.  Instead  of  fighting 
the  Philistine  in  the  name  of  freedom,  or  fighting 
the  vulgar  iconoclast  in  the  name  of  wholesome 
human  notions,  it  might  be  better  to  write  for 
one's  own  band  of  comprehenders,  in  order  that 
one  might  have  something  genuine  with  which  to 
appeal  to  both  the  mob  of  the  "bourgeois"  and  the 
ferocious  vandals  who  had  been  dividing  the  field 
among  them.  Far  better  a  quarrel  among  these 
intensely  self-conscious  groups  than  the  issues  that 
had  filled  The  Atlantic  and  The  Nation  with  their 
dreary  obsolescence.  Far  better  for  the  mind  that 
aspired  towards  "culture"  to  be  told  not  to  con 
form  or  worship,  but  to  search  out  its  group,  its 
own  temperamental  community  of  sentiment,  and 
there  deepen  appreciations  through  sympathetic 
contact. 

It  was  no  longer  a  question  of  being  hospitable 
towards  the  work  of  other  countries.  Miro  found 
the  whole  world  open  to  him,  in  these  days, 
through  the  enterprise  of  publishers.  He  and  his 
friends  felt  more  sympathetic  with  certain  groups 

[27] 


in  France  and  Russia  than  they  did  with  the  varie 
gated  "prominent  authors"  of  their  own  land. 
Winston  Churchill  as  a  novelist  came  to  seem 
more  of  an  alien  than  Artzybashev.  The  fact  of 
culture  being  international  had  been  followed  by 
a  sense  of  its  being.  The  old  cultural  attitude 
had  been  hospitable  enough,  but  it  had  imported 
its  alien  culture  in  the  form  of  "comparative  lit 
erature."  It  was  hospitable  only  in  trying  to 
mould  its  own  taste  to  the  orthodox  canons  abroad. 
The  older  American  critic  was  mostly  interested  in 
getting  the  proper  rank  and  reverence  for  what  he 
borrowed.  The  new  critic  will  take  what  suits  his 
community  of  sentiment.  He  will  want  to  link 
up  not  with  the  foreign  canon,  but  with  that  group 
which  is  nearest  in  spirit  with  the  effort  he  and  his 
friends  are  making.  The  American  has  to  work  to 
interpret  and  portray  the  life  he  knows.  He  can 
not  be  international  in  the  sense  that  anything  but 
the  life  in  which  he  is  saturated,  with  its  questions 
and  its  colors,  can  be  the  material  for  his  art. 
But  he  can  be  international — and  must  be — in  the 
sense  that  he  works  with  a  certain  hopeful  vision 
of  a  "young  world,"  and  with  certain  ideal  values 

[28] 


upon  which  the  younger  men,  stained  and  revolted 
by  war,  in  all  countries  are  agreeing. 

Miro  wonders  sometimes  whether  the  direction 
in  which  he  is  tending  will  not  bring  him  around 
the  circle  again  to  a  new  classicism.  The  last 
stage  in  the  history  of  the  man  of  culture  will  be 
that  "classic"  which  he  did  not  understand  and 
which  his  mind  spent  its  youth  in  overthrowing. 
But  it  will  be  a  classicism  far  different  from  that 
which  was  so  unintelligently  handed  down  to  him 
in  the  American  world.  It  will  be  something 
worked  out  and  lived  into.  Looking  into  the  fu 
ture  he  will  have  to  do  what  Van  Wyck  Brooks 
calls  "inventing  a  usable  past."  Finding  little  in 
the  American  tradition  that  is  not  tainted  with 
sweetness  and  light  and  burdened  with  the  terrible 
patronage  of  bourgeois  society,  the  new  classicist 
will  yet  rescue  Thoreau  and  Whitman  and  Mark 
Twain  and  try  to  tap  through  them  a  certain  eter 
nal  human  tradition  of  abounding  vitality  and 
moral  freedom,  and  so  build  out  the  future.  If 
the  classic  means  power  with  restraint,  vitality 
with  harmony,  a  fusion  of  intellect  and  feeling, 
and  a  keen  sense  of  the  artistic  conscience,  then  the 

[29] 


revolutionary  world  is  coming  out  into  the  classic. 
When  Miro  sees  behind  the  minds  of  The  Masses 
group  a  desire  for  form  and  for  expressive  beauty, 
and  sees  the  radicals  following  Jacques  Copeau 
and  reading  Chekhov,  he  smiles  at  the  thought  of 
the  American  critics,  young  and  old,  who  do  not 
know  yet  that  they  are  dead. 


[30] 


OUR  CULTURAL  HUMILITY 

IT  was  Matthew  Arnold,  read  and  reverenced 
by  the  generation  immediately  preceding  our  own, 
who  set  to  our  eyes  a  definition  and  a  goal  of  cul 
ture  which  has  become  the  common  property  of  all 
our  world.  To  know  the  best  that  had  been 
thought  and  said,  to  appreciate  the  master-works 
which  the  previous  civilizations  had  produced,  to 
put  our  minds  and  appreciations  in  contact  with 
the  great  of  all  ages, — here  was  a  clear  ideal  which 
dissolved  the  mists  in  which  the  vaguenesses  of  cul 
ture  had  been  lost.  And  it  was  an  ideal  that  ap 
pealed  with  peculiar  force  to  Americans.  For  it 
was  a  democratic  ideal;  every  one  who  had  the 
energy  and  perseverance  could  reasonably  expect 
to  acquire  by  taking  thought  that  orientation  of 
soul  to  which  Arnold  gave  the  magic  name  of  cul 
ture.  And  it  was  a  quantitative  ideal;  culture 
was  a  matter  of  acquisition — with  appreciation 
and  prayerfulness  perhaps,  but  still  a  matter  of 

[31] 


adding  little  by  little  to  one's  store  until  one 
should  have  a  vision  of  that  radiant  limit,  when 
one  knew  all  the  best  that  had  been  thought  and 
said  and  pictured  in  the  world. 

I  do  not  know  in  just  what  way  the  British  pub 
lic  responded  to  Arnold's  eloquence;  if  the  pro 
phetic  wrath  of  Ruskin  failed  to  stir  them,  it  is 
not  probable  that  they  were  moved  by  the  persua 
siveness  of  Arnold.  But  I  do  know  that,  coming 
at  a  time  when  America  was  producing  rapidly  an 
enormous  number  of  people  who  were  "comfort 
ably  off,"  as  the  phrase  goes,  and  who  were  suf 
ficiently  awake  to  feel  their  limitations,  with  the 
broader  horizons  of  Europe  just  opening  on  the 
view,  the  new  doctrine  had  the  most  decisive  effect 
on  our  succeeding  spiritual  history.  The  "land- 
of-liberty"  American  of  the  era  of  Dickens  still  ex 
ists  in  the  British  weeklies  and  in  observations  of 
America  by  callow  young  journalists,  but  as  a  liv 
ing  species  he  has  long  been  extinct.  His  place 
has  been  taken  by  a  person  whose  pride  is  meas 
ured  not  by  the  greatness  of  the  "land  of  the  free," 
but  by  his  own  orientation  in  Europe. 

Already  in  the  nineties,  our  college  professors 
and  our  artists  were  beginning  to  require  the  seal 

[32] 


of  a  European  training  to  justify  their  existence. 
We  appropriated  the  German  system  of  education. 
Our  millionaires  began  the  collecting  of  pictures 
and  the  endowment  of  museums  with  foreign 
works  of  art.  We  began  the  exportation  of 
school-teachers  for  a  summer  tour  of  Europe. 
American  art  and  music  colonies  sprang  up  in 
Paris  and  Berlin  and  Munich.  The  movement 
became  a  rush.  That  mystical  premonition  of 
Europe,  which  Henry  James  tells  us  he  had  from 
his  earliest  boyhood,  became  the  common  property 
of  the  talented  young  American,  who  felt  a  cer 
tain  starvation  in  his  own  land,  and  longed  for  the 
fleshpots  of  European  culture.  But  the  bour 
geoisie  soon  followed  the  artistic  and  the  semi-ar 
tistic,  and  Europe  became  so  much  the  fashion  that 
it  is  now  almost  a  test  of  respectability  to  have 
traveled  at  least  once  abroad. 

Underlying  all  this  vivacious  emigration,  there 
was  of  course  a  real  if  vague  thirst  for  "culture," 
and,  in  strict  accord  with  Arnold's  definition,  the 
idea  that  somehow  culture  could  be  imbibed,  that 
from  the  contact  with  the  treasures  of  Europe 
there  would  be  rubbed  off  on  us  a  little  of  that 
grace  which  had  made  the  art.  So  for  those  who 

[33] 


could  not  travel  abroad,  our  millionaires  trans 
ported,  in  almost  terrifying  bulk  and  at  staggering 
cost,  samples  of  everything  that  the  foreign  gal 
leries  had  to  show.  We  were  to  acquire  culture  at 
any  cost,  and  we  had  no  doubt  that  we  had  dis 
covered  the  royal  road  to  it.  We  followed  it,  at 
any  rate,  with  eye  single  to  the  goal.  The  natur 
ally  sensitive,  who  really  found  in  the  European 
literature  and  arts  some  sort  of  spiritual  nourish 
ment,  set  the  pace,  and  the  crowd  followed  at  their 
heels. 

This  cultural  humility  of  ours  astonished  and 
still  astonishes  Europe.  In  England,  where  "cul 
ture"  is  taken  very  frivolously,  the  bated  breath  of 
the  American,  when  he  speaks  of  Shakespeare  or 
Tennyson  or  Browning,  is  always  cause  for  amuse 
ment.  And  the  Frenchman  is  always  a  little  puz 
zled  at  the  crowds  who  attend  lectures  in  Paris 
on  "How  to  See  Europe  Intelligently,"  or  are 
taken  in  vast  parties  through  the  Louvre.  The 
European  objects  a  little  to  being  so  constantly 
regarded  as  the  keeper  of  a  huge  museum.  If  you 
speak  to  him  of  culture,  you  find  him  frankly  more 
interested  in  contemporaneous  literature  and  art 
and  music  than  in  his  worthies  of  the  olden  time, 

[34] 


more  interested  in  discriminating  the  good  of  to 
day  than  in  accepting  the  classics.  If  he  is  a  cul 
tivated  person,  he  is  much  more  interested  usually 
in  quarreling  about  a  living  dog  than  in  reverenc 
ing  a  dead  lion.  If  he  is  a  French  lettre^  for  in 
stance,  he  will  be  producing  a  book  on  the  psychol 
ogy  of  some  living  writer,  while  the  Anglo-Saxon 
will  be  writing  another  on  Shakespeare.  His 
whole  attitude  towards  the  things  of  culture,  be  it 
noted,  is  one  of  daily  appreciation  and  intimacy, 
not  that  attitude  of  reverence  with  which  we 
Americans  approach  alien  art,  and  which  penalizes 
cultural  heresy  among  us. 

The  European  may  be  enthusiastic,  polemic,  ra 
diant,  concerning  his  culture;  he  is  never  humble. 
And  he  is,  above  all,  never  humble  before  the  cul 
ture  of  another  country.  The  Frenchman  will 
hear  nothing  but  French  music,  read  nothing  but 
French  literature,  and  prefers  his  own  art  to  that 
of  any  other  nation.  He  can  hardly  understand 
our  almost  pathetic  eagerness  to  learn  of  the  cul 
ture  of  other  nations,  our  humility  of  worship  in 
the  presence  of  art  that  in  no  sense  represents  the 
expression  of  any  of  our  ideals  and  motivating 
forces. 

[35] 


To  a  genuinely  patriotic  American  this  cultural 
humility  of  ours  is  somewhat  humiliating.  In  re 
sponse  to  this  eager  inexhaustible  interest  in  Eu 
rope,  where  is  Europe's  interest  in  us?  Europe  is 
to  us  the  land  of  history,  of  mellow  tradition,  of 
the  arts  and  graces  of  life,  of  the  best  that  has  been 
said  and  thought  in  the  world.  To  Europe  we  are 
the  land  of  crude  racial  chaos,  of  skyscrapers  and 
bluff,  of  millionaires  and  "bosses."  A  French 
philosopher  visits  us,  and  we  are  all  eagerness  to 
get  from  him  an  orientation  in  all  that  is  moving  in 
the  world  of  thought  across  the  seas.  But  does  he 
ask  about  our  philosophy,  does  he  seek  an  orienta 
tion  in  the  American  thought  of  the  day?  Not  at 
all.  Our  humility  has  kept  us  from  forcing  it 
upon  his  attention,  and  it  scarcely  exists  for  him. 
Our  advertising  genius,  so  powerful  and  universal 
where  soap  and  biscuits  are  concerned,  wilts  and 
languishes  before  the  task  of  trumpeting  our  intel 
lectual  and  spiritual  products  before  the  world. 
Yet  there  can  be  little  doubt  which  is  the  more  in 
trinsically  worth  advertising.  But  our  humility 
causes  us  to  be  taken  at  our  own  face  value,  and 
for  all  this  patient  fixity  of  gaze  upon  Europe,  we 
get  little  reward  except  to  be  ignored,  or  to  have 

[36] 


our  interest  somewhat  contemptuously  dismissed 
as  parasitic. 

And  with  justice !  For  our  very  goal  and  ideal 
of  culture  has  made  us  parasites.  Our  method 
has  been  exactly  wrong.  For  the  truth  is  that 
the  definition  of  culture,  which  we  have  accepted 
with  such  devastating  enthusiasm,  is  a  definition 
emanating  from  that  very  barbarism  from  which 
its  author  recoiled  in  such  horror.  If  it  were 
not  that  all  our  attitude  showed  that  we  had 
adopted  a  quite  different  standard,  it  would  be 
the  merest  platitude  to  say  that  culture  is  not  an 
acquired  familiarity  with  things  outside,  but  an 
inner  and  constantly  operating  taste,  a  fresh  and 
responsive  power  of  discrimination,  and  the  in 
sistent  judging  of  everything  that  comes  to  our 
minds  and  senses.  It  is  clear  that  such  a  sensitive 
taste  cannot  be  acquired  by  torturing  our  appre 
ciations  into  conformity  with  the  judgments  of 
others,  no  matter  how  "authoritative"  those  judg 
ments  may  be.  Such  a  method  means  a  hypnoti- 
zation  of  judgment,  not  a  true  development  of 
soul. 

At  the  back  of  Arnold's  definition  is,  of  course, 
the  implication  that  if  we  have  only  learned  to 

[37] 


appreciate  the  "best,"  we  shall  have  been  trained 
thus  to  discriminate  generally,  that  our  apprecia 
tion  of  Shakespeare  will  somehow  spill  over  into 
admiration  of  the  incomparable  art  of  Mr.  G. 
Lowes  Dickinson.  This  is,  of  course,  exactly  to 
reverse  the  psychological  process.  A  true  appre 
ciation  of  the  remote  and  the  magnificent  is  ac 
quired  only  after  the  judgment  has  learned  to 
discriminate  with  accuracy  and  taste  between  the 
good  and  bad,  the  sincere  and  the  false,  of  the 
familiar  and  contemporaneous  art  and  writing  of 
every  day.  To  set  up  an  alien  standard  of  the 
classics  is  merely  to  give  our  lazy  taste  a  resting- 
point,  and  to  prevent  forever  any  genuine  culture. 
This  virus  of  the  "best"  rages  throughout  all 
our  Anglo-Saxon  campaign  for  culture.  Is  it  not 
a  notorious  fact  that  our  professors  of  English 
literature  make  no  attempt  to  judge  the  work  pro 
duced  since  the  death  of  the  last  consecrated  saint 
of  the  literary  canon, — Robert  Louis  Stevenson? 
In  strict  accordance  with  Arnold's  doctrine,  they 
are  waiting  for  the  judgment  upon  our  contempo 
raries  which  they  call  the  test  of  time,  that  is,  an 
authoritative  objective  judgment,  upon  which 
they  can  unquestioningly  rely.  Surely  it  seems  as 

[38] 


if  the  principle  of  authority,  having  been  ousted 
from  religion  and  politics,  had  found  a  strong 
refuge  in  the  sphere  of  culture.  This  tyranny  of 
the  "best"  objectifies  all  our  taste.  It  is  a  "best" 
that  is  always  outside  of  our  native  reactions  to 
the  freshnesses  and  sincerities  of  life,  a  "best"  to 
which  our  spontaneities  must  be  disciplined.  By 
fixing  our  eyes  humbly  on  the  ages  that  are  past, 
and  on  foreign  countries,  we  effectually  protect 
ourselves  from  that  inner  taste  which  is  the  only 
sincere  "culture." 

Our  cultural  humility  before  the  civilizations  of 
Europe,  then,  is  the  chief  obstacle  which  prevents 
us  from  producing  any  true  indigenous  culture  of 
our  own.  I  am  far  from  saying,  of  course,  that 
it  is  not  necessary  for  our  arts  to  be  fertilized  by 
the  civilizations  of  other  nations  past  and  present. 
The  culture  of  Europe  has  arisen  only  from  such 
an  extensive  cross-fertilization  in  the  past.  But 
we  have  passed  through  that  period  of  learning, 
and  it  is  time  for  us  now  to  set  up  our  individual 
standards.  We  are  already  "heir  of  all  the  ages" 
through  our  English  ancestry,  and  our  last  half- 
century  of  European  idolatry  has  done  for  us  all 
that  can  be  expected.  But,  with  our  eyes  fixed  on 

[39] 


Europe,  we  continue  to  strangle  whatever  native 
genius  springs  up.  Is  it  not  a  tragedy  that  the 
American  artist  feels  the  imperative  need  of 
foreign  approval  before  he  can  be  assured  of  his 
attainment?  Through  our  inability  or  unwilling 
ness  to  judge  him,  through  our  cultural  humility, 
through  our  insistence  on  the  objective  standard, 
we  drive  him  to  depend  on  a  foreign  clientele,  to 
live  even  in  foreign  countries,  where  taste  is  more 
confident  of  itself  and  does  not  require  the  label, 
to  be  assured  of  the  worth  of  what  it  appreciates. 
The  only  remedy  for  this  deplorable  situation 
is  the  cultivation  of  a  new  American  nationalism. 
We  need  that  keen  introspection  into  the  beauties 
and  vitalities  and  sincerities  of  our  own  life  and 
ideals  that  characterizes  the  French.  The  French 
culture  is  animated  by  principles  and  tastes  which 
are  as  old  as  art  itself.  There  are  "classics,"  not 
in  the  English  and  Arnoldian  sense  of  a  conse 
crated  canon,  dissent  from  which  is  heresy,  but  in 
the  sense  that  each  successive  generation,  putting 
them  to  the  test,  finds  them  redolent  of  those 
qualities  which  are  characteristically  French,  and 
so  preserves  them  as  a  precious  heritage.  This 
cultural  chauvinism  is  the  most  harmless  of 

[40] 


patriotisms;  indeed  it  is  absolutely  necessary  for 
a  true  life  of  civilization.  And  it  can  hardly  be 
too  intense,  or  too  exaggerated.  Such  an  inter 
national  art  exhibition  as  was  held  recently  in 
New  York,  with  the  frankly  avowed  purpose  of 
showing  American  artists  how  bad  they  were  in 
comparison  with  the  modern  French,  represents  an 
appalling  degradation  of  attitude  which  would 
be  quite  impossible  in  any  other  country.  Such 
groveling  humility  can  only  have  the  effect  of 
making  us  feeble  imitators,  instead  of  making  us 
assert,  with  all  the  power  at  our  command,  the 
genius  and  individuality  which  we  already  possess 
in  quantity,  if  we  would  only  see  it. 

In  the  contemporary  talent  that  Europe  is  ex 
hibiting,  or  even  in  the  genius  of  the  last  half- 
century,  one  will  go  far  to  find  greater  poets  than 
our  Walt  Whitman,  philosophers  than  William 
James,  essayists  than  Emerson  and  Thoreau,  com 
posers  than  MacDowell,  sculptors  than  Saint- 
Gaudens.  In  any  other  country  such  names 
would  be  focuses  to  which  interest  and  enthusiasms 
would  converge,  symbols  of  a  national  spirit 
about  which  judgments  and  tastes  would  revolve. 
For  none  of  them  could  have  been  born  in  another 

[41] 


country  than  our  own.  If  some  of  them  had  their 
training  abroad,  it  was  still  the  indigenous 
America  that  their  works  expressed, — the  Amer 
ican  ideals  and  qualities,  our  pulsating  democ 
racy,  the  vigor  and  daring  of  our  pioneer  spirit, 
our  sense  of  camaraderie,  our  dynamism,  the  big- 
heartedness  of  our  scenery,  our  hospitality  to  all 
the  world.  In  the  music  of  MacDowell,  the 
poetry  of  Whitman,  the  philosophy  of  James,  I 
recognize  a  national  spirit,  "Pesprit  americain,"  as 
superbly  clear  and  gripping  as  anything  the  cul 
ture  of  Europe  has  to  offer  us,  and  immensely 
more  stimulating,  because  of  the  very  body  and 
soul  of  to-day's  interests  and  aspirations. 

To  come  to  an  intense  self-consciousness  of 
these  qualities,  to  feel  them  in  the  work  of  these 
masters,  and  to  search  for  them  everywhere  among 
the  lesser  artists  and  thinkers  who  are  trying  to 
express  the  soul  of  this  hot  chaos  of  America, — 
this  will  be  the  attainment  of  culture  for  us. 
Not  to  look  on  ravished  while  our  marvelous 
millionaires  fill  our  museums  with  "old  masters," 
armor,  and  porcelains,  but  to  turn  our  eyes  upon 
our  own  art  for  a  time,  shut  ourselves  in  with 
our  own  genius,  and  cultivate  with  an  intense  and 

[42] 


partial  pride  what  we  have  already  achieved 
against  the  obstacles  of  our  cultural  humility. 
Only  thus  shall  we  conserve  the  American  spirit 
and  saturate  the  next  generation  with  those  quali 
ties  which  are  our  strength.  Only  thus  can  we 
take  our  rightful  place  among  the  cultures  of  the 
world,  to  which  we  are  entitled  if  we  would  but 
recognize  it.  We  shall  never  be  able  to  per 
petuate  our  ideals  except  in  the  form  of  art  and 
literature;  the  world  will  never  understand  our 
spirit  except  in  terms  of  art.  When  shall  we 
learn  that  "culture,"  like  the  kingdom  of  heaven, 
lies  within  us,  in  the  heart  of  our  national  soul, 
and  not  in  foreign  galleries  and  books?  When 
shall  we  learn  to  be  proud?  For  only  pride  is 
creative. 


us] 


SIX  PORTRAITS 
I — KAREN 

II SOPHRONISBA 

III — MON  AMIE 
IV — FERGUS 
V — THE  PROFESSOR 
VI — ONE  OF  OUR  CONQUERORS 


KAREN 

KAREN  interested  more  by  what  she  always 
seemed  about  to  say  and  be  than  by  anything  she 
was  at  the  moment.  I  could  never  tell  whether 
her  inscrutability  was  deliberate  or  whether  she 
did  not  know  how  to  be  articulate.  When  she 
was  pleased  she  would  gaze  at  you  benignly  but 
there  was  always  a  slight  uneasiness  in  the  air  as 
if  the  serenity  were  only  a  resultant  of  tumultuous 
feelings  that  were  struggling  to  appreciate  the 
situation.  She  was  always  most  animated  when 
she  was  annoyed  at  you.  At  those  times  you 
could  fairly  feel  the  piquant  shafts  of  evil-heart- 
edness  hitting  your  body  as  she  contended  against 
your  egoism  or  any  of  the  personal  failings  that 
hurt  her  sense  of  your  fitness.  These  moments 
took  you  into  the  presence  of  the  somber  irascib 
ility  of  that  northern  land  from  which  she  came, 
and  you  felt  her  foreignness  brush  you.  Her 
smooth,  fair,  parted  hair  would  become  bristly 

[47] 


and  surly;  that  face,  which  looked  in  repose  like 
some  Madonna  which  a  Swedish  painter  would 
love,  took  on  a  flush;  green  lights  glanced  from 
her  eyes.  She  was  as  inscrutable  in  anger  as  she 
was  in  her  friendliness.  You  never  knew  just 
what  strange  personal  freak  of  your  villainy  had 
set  it  off,  though  you  often  found  it  ascribed  to 
some  boiling  fury  in  your  own  placid  soul.  You 
were  not  aware  of  this  fury,  but  her  intuition  for 
it  made  her  more  inscrutable  than  ever. 

I  first  met  Karen  at  a  state  university  in  the 
West  where  she  had  come  for  some  special  work 
in  literature,  after  a  few  years  of  earning  her 
living  at  browbeaten  stenography.  She  never 
went  to  her  classes,  and  I  had  many  long  walks 
with  her  by  the  lake.  In  that  somewhat  thin  in 
tellectual  atmosphere  of  the  college,  she  devoted 
most  of  her  time  to  the  fine  art  of  personal  rela 
tions,  and,  as  nobody  who  ever  looked  at  her  was 
not  fascinated  by  her  blonde  inscrutability  and 
curious  soft  intensity,  she  had  no  difficulty  in  soon 
enmeshing  herself  in  several  nebulous  friendships. 
She  told  us  that  she  hoped  eventually  to  write 
novels,  but  there  was  never  anything  to  show  that 
her  novels  unfolded  anywhere  but  in  her  mind  as 

[48] 


they  interpreted  the  richly  exciting  detail  of  her 
daily  personal  contacts.  If  you  asked  her  about 
her  writings,  you  became  immediately  thankful 
that  looks  could  not  slay,  and  some  witch-fearing 
ancestor  crossed  himself  shudderingly  in  your 
soul.  Intercourse  with  Karen  was  not  very  con 
crete.  Our  innumerable  false  starts  at  under 
standing,  the  violence  and  exact  quality  of  my 
interest,  the  technique  of  getting  just  that  smooth 
and  silky  rapport  between  us  which  she  was  always 
anticipating — this  seemed  to  make  up  the  fabric  of 
her  thoughts.  At  that  •  time  she  was  reading 
mostly  George  Moore  and  Henry  James,  and  I 
think  she  hoped  we  would  all  prove  adequate  for  a 
subtly  interwoven  society.  This  was  a  little 
difficult  in  a  group  that  was  proud  of  its  moderni 
ties,  of  its  dizzy  walking  over  flimsy  generaliza 
tions,  of  its  gifts  of  exploding  in  shrapnels  of 
epigram.  Karen  loathed  ideas  and  often  quoted 
George  Moore  on  their  hideousness.  The  mere 
suggestion  of  an  idea  was  so  likely  to  destroy  the 
poise  of  her  mood,  that  conversation  became  a 
strategy  worth  working  for.  Karen  did  not  think, 
she  felt — in  slow,  sensuous  outlines.  You  could 
feel  her  feelings  curiously  putting  out  long 

[49] 


streamers  at  you,  and,  if  you  were  in  the  mood,  a 
certain  subterranean  conversation  was  not  im 
possible.  But  if  you  did  not  happen  to  guess 
her  mood,  then  you  quarreled. 

When  I  met  Karen,  she  was  twenty-five,  and  I 
guessed  that  she  would  always  be  twenty-five. 
She  had  personal  ideals  that  she  wished  for  herself, 
and  if  you  asked  what  she  was  thinking  about,  it 
was  quite  likely  to  be  the  kind  of  noble  woman 
she  was  to  be,  or  feared  she  would  not  be,  at  forty. 
But  she  was  too  insistent  upon  creating  her  world 
in  her  own  image  to  remain  sensitive  to  the  im 
pressions  that  make  for  growth.  As  the  story  of 
her  life  came  out,  the  bitter  immigrant  journey, 
the  despised  house-work,  the  struggle  to  get  an 
education,  the  office  drudgery,  the  lack  of  roots 
and  a  place,  you  came  to  appreciate  this  personal 
cult  of  Karen's.  She  was  so  clearly  finer  and  in- 
tenser  than  the  people  who  had  been  in  the  world 
about  her,  that  her  starved  soul  had  to  find  nour 
ishment  where  it  could.  Even  if  she  was  insen 
sible  to  ideas,  her  soft  searching  at  least  allured. 
It  was  perhaps  her  starved  condition  which  made 
her  friendships  so  subject  to  sudden  disaster. 
Karen's  notes  were  always  a  little  more  brightly 
[50] 


intimate  than  her  personal  resources  were  able  to 
support.  She  seemed  to  start  with  a  plan  of  the 
conversation  in  her  head.  If  you  bungled,  and 
with  her  little  retreats  and  evasions  you  were  al 
ways  bungling,  you  could  feel  her  spirit  stamp  its 
feet  in  vexation.  She  would  plan  pleasant 
soliloquies,  and  you  would  find  yourself  in  a 
fiercely  cross-examinatory  mood.  She  loathed 
your  probing  of  her  mood,  and  parried  you  in  a 
helpless  way  which  made  you  feel  as  if  you  were 
tearing  tissue.  You  always  seemed  with  Karen 
to  be  in  a  laboratory  of  personal  relations  where 
priceless  things  were  being  discovered,  but  you 
felt  her  more  as  an  alchemist  than  a  modern 
physicist  of  the  soul,  and  her  method  rather  that 
of  trial  and  error  than  real  experiment. 

I  am  quite  sure  that  Karen's  system  of  personal 
relations  was  platonic.  She  never  seemed  to  get 
beyond  that  laying  of  the  broad  foundation  of  the 
Jamesian  tone  that  would  have  been  necessary  to 
make  the  thing  an  "affair."  She  was  often  lovely 
and  she  was  not  unloved.  She  was  much  inter 
ested  in  men,  but  it  was  more  as  co-actors  in  a 
personal  drama  of  her  own  devising  than  as  lovers 
or  even  as  men.  The  most  she  ever  hoped  for,  I 

[51] 


think,  was  to  be  the  sacred  fount,  and  to  have  her 
flow  copious  and  manifold.  You  felt  the  im 
mense  qualifications  a  man  would  have  to  have 
in  the  subtleties  of  rapport  to  make  him  even  a 
candidate  for  loving.  For  Karen,  men  seemed  to 
exist  only  as  they  brought  a  touch  of  ceremonial 
into  their  personal  relations.  I  think  Karen 
never  quite  intended  to  surround  herself  with  the 
impenetrable  armor  of  vestal  virginity,  and  yet 
she  did  not  avoid  it.  However  glowing  and  mys 
terious  she  might  look  as  she  lay  before  the  fire 
in  her  room,  so  that  to  an  impatient  friend  nothing 
might  seem  more  important  than  to  catch  her  up 
warmly  in  his  arms,  he  would  have  been  an  auda 
cious  brigand  who  violated  the  atmosphere. 
Karen  always  so  much  gave  the  impression  of 
playing  for  higher  and  nobler  stakes  that  no  bri 
gand  ever  appeared.  Whether  she  deluded  her 
self  as  to  what  she  wanted  or  whether  she  had  a 
clearer  insight  than  most  women  into  the  preda- 
toriness  of  my  sex,  her  relations  with  men  were 
rarely  smooth.  Caddishness  seemed  to  be  break 
ing  out  repeatedly  in  the  most  unexpected  places. 
Some  of  the  most  serious  of  my  friends  got  dark 
inadequacies  charged  against  them  by  Karen.  I 

[52] 


was  a  little  in  her  confidence,  but  I  could  rarely 
gather  more  than  that  the  men  of  to-day  had  no 
sensitiveness  and  were  far  too  coarse  for  the  fine 
and  decent  friendships  which  she  spent  so  much 
of  her  time  and  artistic  imagination  on  arranging 
for  them  with  herself.  I  was  constantly  under 
going,  at  the  hands  of  Karen,  a  course  of  discipline 
myself,  for  my  ungovernable  temper  or  my  various 
repellant  "tones"  or  my  failure  to  catch  just  the 
quality  of  certain  people  we  discussed.  .1  under 
stood  dimly  the  lucklessness  of  her  "cads."  They 
had  perhaps  not  been  urbanely  plastic,  they  had 
perhaps  been  impatiently  adoring.  They  had  at 
least  not  offended  in  any  of  the  usual  ways.  She 
would  even  forgive  them  sometimes  with  sur 
prising  suddenness.  But  she  never  so  far  forgot 
her  principles  as  to  let  them  dictate  a  mood. 
She  never  recognized  any  of  the  naive  collisions  of 
men  and  women. 

Karen  often  seemed  keenly  to  wonder  at  this 
unsatisfactoriness  of  men.  She  cultivated  them, 
walking  always  in  her  magic  circle,  but  they 
slipped  and  grew  dimmer.  She  had  her  fling  of 
feminism  towards  the  end  of  her  year.  She  left 
the  university  to  become  secretary  for  a  state  suf- 

[53] 


frage  leader.  Under  the  stress  of  public  life  she 
became  fierce  and  serious.  She  abandoned  the 
picturesque  peasant  costumes  which  she  had  af 
fected,  and  made  herself  hideous  in  mannish  skirts 
and  waists.  She  felt  the  woes  of  women,  and  saw 
everywhere  the  devilish  hand  of  the  exploiting 
male.  If  she  ever  married,  she  would  have  a 
house  separate  from  her  husband.  She  would  be 
no  parasite,  no  man's  woman.  She  spoke  of  the 
"human  sex,"  and  set  up  its  norms  for  her  ac 
quaintanceships. 

When  I  saw  Karen  later,  however,  she  was 
herself  again.  She  had  taken  up  again  the  tissue 
of  personal  relations.  But  in  that  reconstituted 
world  all  her  friends  seemed  to  be  women.  Her 
taste  of  battle  had  seemed  to  fortify  and  enlighten 
that  ancient  shrinking;  her  old  annoyance  that 
men  should  be  abruptly  different  from  what  she 
would  have  them.  She  was  intimate  with  fem 
inists  whose  feminism  had  done  little  more  for 
their  emotional  life  than  to  make  them  acutely 
conscious  of  the  cloven  hoof  of  the  male.  Karen, 
in  her  brooding  way,  was  able  to  give  this  philos 
ophy  a  far  more  poetical  glamor  than  any  one  I 

[54] 


knew.  Her  woman  friends  adored  her,  even  those 
who  had  not  acquired  that  mystic  sense  of 
"loyalty  to  woman"  and  did  not  believe  that  no 
man  was  so  worthy  that  he  might  not  be  betrayed 
with  impunity.  Karen,  on  her  part,  adored  her 
friends,  and  the  care  that  had  been  spent  on  un 
worthy  men  now  went  into  toning  up  and  making 
subtle  the  women  around  her.  She  did  a  great 
deal  for  them,  and  was  constantly  discovering 
godlike  creatures  in  shop  and  street  and  bringing 
them  in  to  be  mystically  mingled  with  her  circle. 
Naturally  it  is  Karen's  married  friends  who 
cause  her  greatest  concern.  Eternal  vigilance  is 
the  price  of  their  salvation  from  masculine  tyr 
anny.  In  the  enemy's  country,  under  at  least 
the  nominal  yoke,  these  married  girls  seem  to 
Karen  subjects  for  her  prayer  and  aid.  She  has 
become  exquisitely  sensitive  to  any  aggressive 
gestures  on  the  part  of  these  creatures  with  whom 
her  dear  friends  have  so  inexplicably  allied  them 
selves,  and  she  is  constantly  in  little  subtle  in 
trigues  to  get  the  victim  free  or  at  least  armisticed. 
She  broods  over  her  little  circle,  inscrutable,  vigi 
lant,  a  true  vestal  virgin  on  the  sacred  hearth  of 

[55] 


woman.  Husbands  are  doubtless  better  for  that 
silent  enemy  whom  they  see  jealously  adoring 
their  wives. 

Karen  still  leaves  trails  of  mystery  and  desire 
where  she  goes,  but  it  is  as  a  woman's  woman 
that  I  see  her  now,  and,  I  am  ashamed  to  say, 
ignore  her.  Men  could  not  be  crowded  into  her 
Jamesian  world  and  she  has  solved  the  problem 
by  obliterating  them.  She  will  not  live  by  means 
of  them.  Since  she  does  not  know  how  to  live 
with  them  she  lives  without  them. 


[56] 


SOPHRONISBA 

I  SHOULD  scarcely  have  understood  Sophronisba 
unless  I  had  imagined  her  against  the  background 
of  that  impeccable  New  England  town  from  which 
she  says  she  escaped.  It  is  a  setting  of  elm- 
shaded  streets,  with  houses  that  can  fairly  be 
called  mansions,  and  broad  lawns  stretching 
away  from  the  green  and  beautiful  white  church. 
In  this  large  princeliness  of  aspect  the  naive 
stranger,  like  myself,  would  imagine  nothing  but 
what  was  grave  and  sweet  and  frank.  Yet  be 
hind  those  pillared  porticos  Sophronisba  tells  me 
sit  little  and  petrified  people.  This  spacious 
beauty  exists  for  people  who  are  mostly  afraid; 
afraid  of  each  other,  afraid  of  candor,  afraid  of 
sex,  afraid  of  radicals.  Underneath  the  large- 
hearted  exterior  she  says  they  are  stifled  within. 
Women  go  queer  from  repression,  spinsters  mul 
tiply  on  families'  hands,  while  the  young  men 

[57] 


drift  away  to  Boston.  Dark  tales  are  heard  of 
sexual  insanity,  and  Sophronisba  seems  to  think 
that  the  chastest  wife  never  conceives  without  a  se 
cret  haunting  in  her  heart  of  guilt.  I  think  there 
are  other  things  in  Sophronisba's  town,  but  these 
are  the  things  she  has  seen,  and  these  are  the 
things  she  has  fled  from. 

Sophronisba  is  perhaps  forty,  but  she  is  prob 
ably  much  younger  than  she  was  at  eleven.  At 
that  age  the  devilish  conviction  that  she  hated  her 
mother  strove  incessantly  with  the  heavenly  con 
viction  that  it  was  her  duty  to  love  her.  And 
there  were  unpleasing  aunts  and  cousins  who  ex- 
haustingly  had  to  be  loved  when  she  wished  only 
spitefully  to  slap  them.  Her  conscience  thus 
played  her  unhappy  tricks  through  a  submerged 
childhood,  until  college  came  as  an  emancipation 
from  that  deadly  homesickness  that  is  sickness  not 
for  your  home  but  intolerance  at  it. 

No  more  blessed  relief  comes  to  the  conscience- 
burdened  than  the  chance  to  exchange  their  duties 
for  their  tastes,  when  what  you  should  unselfishly 
do  to  others  is  transformed  into  what  books  and 
pictures  you  ought  to  like.  Your  conscience  gets 
its  daily  exercise,  but  without  the  moral  pain.  I 

[58] 


imagine  Sophronisba  was  not  unhappy  at  college, 
where  she  could  give  up  her  weary  efforts  to  get 
her  emotions  correct  towards  everybody  in  the 
world  and  the  Three  Persons  in  the  heaven  above 
it,  in  favor  of  acquiring  a  sound  and  authorized 
cultural  taste.  She  seems  to  have  very  dutifully 
taken  her  master's  degree  in  English  literature, 
and  for  her  industrious  conscience  is  recorded 
somewhere  an  unreadable  but  scholarly  thesis,  the 
very  name  of  which  she  has  probably  forgotten 
herself. 

For  several  years  Sophronisba  must  have  flowed 
along  on  that  thin  stream  of  the  intellectual  life 
which  seems  almost  to  have  been  invented  for 
slender  and  thin-lipped  New  England  maidens 
who  desperately  must  make  a  living  for  them 
selves  in  order  to  keep  out  of  the  dull  prison  of 
their  homes.  There  was  for  Sophronisba  a  little 
teaching,  a  little  settlement  work,  a  little  writing, 
and  a  position  with  a  publishing  house.  And 
always  the  firm  clutch  on  New  York  and  the 
dizzy  living  on  a  crust  that  might  at  any  moment 
break  and  precipitate  her  on  the  intolerable  ease  of 
her  dutifully  loving  family.  It  is  the  conven 
tional  opinion  that  this  being  a  prisoner  on  parole 

[59] 


can  be  terminated  only  by  the  safe  custody  of  a 
man,  or  the  thrilling  freedom  of  complete  personal 
success.  Sophronisba's  career  has  been  an  inde 
terminate  sentence  of  womanhood.  She  is  at  once 
a  proof  of  how  very  hard  the  world  still  is  on 
women,  and  how  gaily  they  may  play  the  game 
with  the  odds  against  them. 

I  did  not  meet  Sophronisba  until  she  was  in  the 
mellow  of  her  years,  and  I  cannot  disentangle  all 
her  journalistic  attempts,  her  dives  into  this  maga 
zine  and  that,  the  electrifying  discovery  of  her  by 
a  great  editor,  the  great  careers  that  were  always 
beginning,  the  great  articles  that  were  called  off  at 
the  last  moment,  the  delayed  checks,  the  checks 
that  never  came,  the  magazines  that  went  down 
with  all  on  board.  But  there  were  always  articles 
that  did  come  off,  and  Sophronisba  zigzagged  her 
literary  way  through  fat  years  of  weekly  series 
and  Sunday  supplements  and  lean  years  of  desk 
work  and  book-reviewing.  There  are  some  of 
Sophronisba's  articles  that  I  should  like  to  have 
written  myself.  She  piles  her  facts  with  great 
neatness,  and  there  is  a  little  ironic  punch  some 
times  which  is  not  enough  to  disturb  the  simple 
people  who  read  it,  but  flatters  you  as  of  the  more 

[60] 


subtly  discerning.     Further,   she  has   a  genuine 
talent  for  the  timely. 

There  has  been  strategy  as  well  as  art  in  her 
career.  That  feminine  Yankeeness  which  speaks 
out  of  her  quizzical  features  has  not  lived  in  vain. 
She  tells  with  glee  of  editors  captured  in  skilful 
sorties  of  wit,  of  connections  laboriously  pieced 
together.  She  confesses  to  plots  to  take  the  inter 
esting  and  valuable  in  her  net.  There  is  con 
tinuous  action  along  her  battlefront.  She  makes 
the  acceptance  of  an  article  an  exciting  event.  As 
you  drop  in  upon  her  for  tea  to  follow  her  work 
from  week  to  week,  you  seem  to  move  in  a  maze  of 
editorial  conspiracy.  Her  zestfulness  almost 
brings  a  thrill  into  the  prosaic  business  of  writing. 
Not  beguilements,  but  candor  and  wit,  are  her 
ammunition.  One  would  expect  a  person  who 
looked  like  Sophronisba  to  be  humorous.  But 
her  wit  is  good  enough  to  be  surprising,  it  is  sharp 
but  it  leaves  no  sting.  And  it  gets  all  the  advan 
tage  of  being  carried  along  on  a  voice  that  retains 
the  least  suggestion  of  a  racy  Eastern  twang. 
With  the  twang  goes  that  lift  and  breathlessness 
that  makes  everything  sound  interesting.  When 
you  come  upon  Sophronisba  in  that  charming  din- 

[61] 


ner  group  that  she  frequents  or  as  she  trips  out  of 
the  library,  portfolio  in  hand,  with  a  certain  se 
date  primness  which  no  amount  of  New  York  will 
ever  strain  out  of  her,  you  know  that  for  a  few 
moments  the  air  is  going  to  be  bright. 

How  Sophronisba  got  rid  of  the  virus  of  her 
New  England  conscience  and  morbidities  I  do  not 
know.  She  must  have  exorcised  more  demons 
than  most  of  us  are  even  acquainted  with.  Yet 
she  never  seems  to  have  lost  the  zest  that  comes 
from  standing  on  the  brink  and  watching  the 
Gadarene  swine  plunge  heavily  down  into  the  sea. 
She  has  expelled  the  terrors  of  religion  and  the 
perils  of  thwarted  sex,  but  their  nearness  still 
thrills.  She  would  not  be  herself,  neither  would 
her  wit  be  as  good,  if  it  were  not  much  made  of 
gay  little  blasphemies  and  bold  feminist  irrever 
ences.  There  is  the  unconscious  play  to  the  stiff 
New  England  gallery  that  makes  what  she  says 
of  more  than  local  relevance.  In  her  serious  talk 
there  lingers  the  slight,  interested  bitter  tang  of 
the  old  Puritan  poison.  But  current  issues  mean 
much  to  Sophronisba.  These  things  which  foolish 
people  speak  of  with  grave-faced  strainings  after 
objectivity,  with  uncouth  scientific  jargon  and 

[62] 


sudden  lapses  into  pruriency,  Sophronisba  presents 
as  a  genuine  revelation.  Her  personal  curiosity, 
combined  with  intellectual  clarity,  enable  her  to 
get  it  all  assimilated.  Her  allegiance  went,  of 
course,  quickly  to  Freud,  and  once,  in  a  sudden 
summer  flight  to  Jung  in  Zurich,  she  sat  many 
hours  absorbing  the  theories  from  a  grave,  ample, 
formidably  abstract,  and — for  Sophronisba — too 
unhumorous  Fraiilein  assistant.  What  Sophron 
isba  got  she  has  made  into  a  philosophy  of  life, 
translated  into  New  England  dialect,  and  made 
quite  revealingly  her  own.  Before  journalism 
claimed  her  for  more  startling  researches,  she 
would  often  give  it  for  you  in  racy  and  eager 
fashion,  turning  up  great  layers  of  her  own  life 
and  of  those  she  knew  about  her.  Many  demons 
were  thus  sent  flying. 

Her  exorcisms  have  been  gained  by  a  blazing 
candor  and  by  a  self-directed  sense  of  humor  which 
alone  can  support  it.  With  the  white  light  of 
this  lantern  she  seems  to  have  hunted  down  all 
the  evil  shadows  in  that  background  of  hers.  Her 
relentless  exposure  of  her  own  motives,  her  eager 
publicity  of  soul  and  that  fascinating  life  which 
is  hers,  her  gossip  without  malice  and  her  wise 


cynicism,  make  Sophronisba  the  greatest  of  reliefs 
from  a  world  too  full  of  decent  reticences  and 
self-respects.  That  heavy  conscience  has  been 
trained  down  to  an  athletic  trimness.  I  cannot 
find  an  interest  or  a  realism  or  a  self-interpretation 
at  which  she  will  cringe,  though  three  centuries 
of  Puritanism  in  her  blood  should  tell  her  how 
unhallowed  most  of  them  are. 

Sophronisba,  naturally,  is  feminist  to  the  core. 
Particularly  on  the  subject  of  the  economic  servi 
tude  of  married  women  does  she  grow  very  tense, 
and  if  anywhere  her  sense  of  humor  deserts  her  it 
is  here.  But  she  is  so  convincing  that  she  can 
throw  me  into  a  state  of  profound  depression, 
from  which  I  am  not  cheered  by  reflecting  how 
unconscious  of  their  servitude  most  of  these  women 
are.  Sophronisba  herself  is  a  symbol  of  trium 
phant  spinsterhood  rejoicing  the  heart,  an  un 
married  woman  who  knows  she  would  make  a 
wretched  wife  and  does  not  seem  to  mind.  Her 
going  home  once  a  year  to  see  her  family  has  epic 
quality  about  it.  She  parts  from  her  friends  with 
a  kind  of  resigned  daring,  and  returns  with  the  air 
of  a  Proserpine  from  the  regions  of  Pluto.  To 
have  laid  all  these  ghosts  of  gloom  and  queerness 


and  fear  which  must  have  darkened  her  prim  and 
neglected  young  life,  is  to  have  made  herself  a 
rarely  interesting  woman.  I  think  the  most  de 
lightful  bohemians  are  those  who  have  been  New 
England  Puritans  first. 


'[65] 


MON  AMIE 


SHE  was  French  from  the  crown  of  her  head 
to  the  soles  of  her  feet,  but  she  was  of  that  France 
which  few  Americans,  I  think,  know  or  imagine. 
She  belonged  to  that  France  which  Jean-Chris- 
tophe  found  in  his  friend  Olivier,  a  world  of  flash 
ing  ideas  and  enthusiasms,  a  golden  youth  of 
ideals. 

She  had  picked  me  out  for  an  exchange  of  con 
versation,  as  the  custom  is,  precisely  because  I  had 
left  my  name  at  the  Sorbonne  as  a  person  who 
wrote  a  little.  I  had  put  this  bait  out,  as  it  were, 
deliberately,  with  the  intention  of  hooking  a  mind 
that  cared  for  a  little  more  than  mere  chatter,  but 
I  had  hardly  expected  to  find  it  in  the  form  of  a 
young  girl  who,  as  she  told  me  in  her  charmingly 
polished  note,  was  nineteen  and  had  just  com 
pleted  her  studies. 

[66] 


These  studies  formed  a  useful  introduction 
when  she  received  me  in  the  little  old-fashioned 
apartment  in  the  Batignolles  quarter  on  my  first 
visit.  She  had  made  them  ever  since  she  was 
five  years  old  in  a  wonderful  old  convent  at 
Bourges;  and  in  the  town  had  lived  her  grand 
mother,  a  very  old  lady,  whom  she  had  gone  lov 
ingly  to  see,  as  often  as  she  could  be  away  from 
the  watchful  care  of  the  nuns.  In  her  she  had 
found  her  real  mother,  for  her  parents  had  been 
far  away  in  Brittany.  When  the  old  lady  died, 
my  friend  had  to  face  an  empty  world,  and  to 
become  acquainted  all  over  again  with  a  mother 
whom  she  confessed  she  found  "little  sympa 
thetic."  But  she  was  a  girl  of  devoir,  and  she 
would  do  nothing  to  wound  her. 

She  told  me  one  afternoon  as  we  took  our  first 
walk  through  the  dusky  richness  of  the  Musee 
Cluny,  that  the  shock  of  death  had  disclosed  to  her 
how  fleeting  life  was,  how  much  she  thought  of 
death,  and  how  much  she  feared  it.  I  used  the 
lustiness  of  her  grandmother's  eighty-four  years  to 
convince  her  as  to  how  long  she  might  have  to 
postpone  her  dread,  but  her  fragile  youth  seemed 
already  to  feel  the  beating  wings  about  her.  As 


she  talked,  her  expression  had  all  that  wistful 
seriousness  of  the  French  face  which  has  not  been 
devitalized  by  the  city,  that  sense  of  the  nearness 
of  unutterable  things  which  runs,  a  golden  thread, 
through  their  poetry.  Though  she  had  lived  away 
from  Brittany,  in  her  graver  moments  there  was 
much  in  her  of  the  patient  melancholy  of  the 
Breton.  For  her  father's  people  had  been  sea- 
folk, — not  fishermen,  but  pilots  and  navigators  on 
those  misty  and  niggardly  shores, — and  the  long 
defeat  and  ever-trustful  suffering  was  in  her 
blood.  She  would  interpret  to  me  the  homely 
pictures  at  the  Luxembourg  which  spoke  of  coast 
and  peasant  life;  and  her  beautiful  articulateness 
brought  the  very  soul  of  France  out  of  the  can 
vases  of  Cottet  and  Breton  and  Carriere.  She  un 
derstood  these  people. 

But  she  was  very  various,  and,  if  at  first  we 
plumbed  together  the  profoundest  depths  of  her, 
we  soon  got  into  shallower  waters.  The  fluency 
of  her  thought  outran  any  foreign  medium,  and 
made  anything  but  her  flying  French  impossible. 
Her  meager  English  had  been  learned  from  some 
curious  foreigner  with  an  accent  more  German 
than  French,  and  we  abandoned  it  by  mutual  con- 
[68] 


sent.  Our  conversation  became  an  exchange  of 
ideas  and  not  of  languages.  Or  rather  her  mind 
became  the  field  where  I  explored  at  will. 

I  think  I  began  by  assuming  a  Catholic  devotion 
in  her,  and  implied  that  her  serious  outlook  on 
life  might  lead  her  into  the  church.  She  scoffed 
unmitigatedly  at  this.  The  nuns  were  not  un 
kindly,  she  said,  but  they  were  hard  and  narrow 
and  did  not  care  for  the  theater  and  for  books, 
which  she  adored. 

She  believed  in  God.  "Et  le  theatre !"  I  said, 
which  delighted  her  hugely.  But  these  Christian 
virtues  made  unlovely  characters  and  cut  one  off 
so  painfully  from  the  fascinating  moving  world  of 
ideas  outside.  But  surely  after  fourteen  years  of 
religious  training  and  Christian  care,  did  she  not 
believe  in  the  Church,  its  priesthood  and  its 
dogmas'? 

She  repudiated  her  faith  with  indescribable 
vivacity.  A  hardened  Anglo-Saxon  agnostic 
would  have  shown  more  diffidence  in  denying  his 
belief  in  dogma  or  the  Bible.  As  for  the  latter, 
she  said,  it  might  do  for  children  of  five  years. 
And  the  cutting  sweep  of  that  "enfants  de  cinq 
ans"  afforded  me  a  revealing  glimpse  of  that  lucid 

[69] 


intelligence  with  which  the  French  mind  cuts 
through  layers  and  strata  of  equivocation  and 
compromise. 

Most  Frenchmen,  if  they  lose  their  faith,  go 
the  swift  and  logical  road  to  atheism.  Her  loss 
was  no  childish  dream  or  frenzy;  she  still  believed 
in  God.  But  as  for  the  Church  and  its  priest 
hood, — she  told  me,  with  malicious  irony,  and 
with  the  intelligence  that  erases  squeamishness,  of 
a  friend  of  hers  who  was  the  daughter  of  the  priest 
in  charge  of  one  of  the  largest  Parisian  churches. 
Would  she  confess  to  a  member  of  a  priestly  caste 
which  thus  broke  faith4?  Confession  was  odious 
anyway.  She  had  been  kept  busy  in  school  in 
venting  sins.  She  would  go  to  church  on  Easter, 
but  she  would  not  take  the  Eucharist,  though  I 
noticed  a  charming  lapse  when  she  crossed  her 
self  with  holy  water  as  we  entered  Notre  Dame 
one  day. 

Where  had  she  ever  got  such  ideas,  shut  up  in  a 
con  vent  *? — Oh,  they  were  all  perfectly  obvious, 
were  they  not?  Where  would  one  not  get  them? 
This  amazing  soul  of  modern  France ! — which  per 
vades  even  the  walls  of  convents  with  its  spirit  of 
free  criticism  and  its  terrible  play  of  the  intelli- 

[70] 


gence;  which  will  examine  and  ruthlessly  cast 
aside,  just  as  my  vibrant,  dark-haired,  fragile 
friend  was  casting  aside,  without  hypocrisy  or 
scruple,  whatever  ideas  do  not  seem  to  enhance 
the  clear  life  to  be  lived. 

ii 

Accustomed  to  grope  and  flounder  in  the  mazes 
of  the  intellect,  I  found  her  intelligence  well-nigh 
terrifying.  I  would  sit  almost  helplessly  and 
listen  to  her  sparkle  of  talk.  Her  freedom 
knocked  into  pieces  all  my  little  imagined  world 
of  French  conventionalities  and  inhibitions. 
How  could  this  pale,  dignified  mother,  to  whom  I 
was  presented  as  she  passed  hurriedly  through  the 
room  one  day,  allow  her  to  wander  so  freely  about 
Paris  parks  and  museums  with  a  foreign  young 
man*?  Her  answer  came  superbly,  with  a.flare  of 
decision  which  showed  me  that  at  least  in  one 
spot  the  eternal  conflict  of  the  generations  had 
been  settled:  "Je  me  permets!" — I  allow  my 
self.  She  gave  me  to  understand  that  for  a  while 
her  mother  had  been  difficult,  but  that  there  was 
no  longer  any  question  of  her  "living  her  life" — 
vivre  sa  vie.  And  she  really  thought  that  her 

[71'] 


mother,  in  releasing  her  from  the  useless  trammels, 
had  become  herself  much  more  of  an  independent 
personality.  As  for  my  friend,  she  dared,  she 
took  risks,  she  played  with  the  adventure  of  life. 
But  she  knew  what  was  there. 

The  motherly  Anglo-Saxon  frame  of  mind 
would  come  upon  me,  to  see  her  in  the  light  of  a 
poor  ignorant  child,  filled  with  fantastic  ideals,  all 
so  pitifully  untested  by  experience.  How  ignor 
ant  she  was  of  life,  and  to  what  pitfalls  her  daring 
freedom  must  expose  her  in  this  unregenerate 
France !  I  tried  and  gave  it  up.  As  she  talked, 
— her  glowing  eyes,  in  which  ideas  seemed  to  well 
up  brimming  with  feeling  and  purpose,  saying 
almost  more  than  her  words, — she  seemed  too  pal 
pably  a  symbol  of  luminous  youth,  a  flaming 
militant  of  the  younger  generation,  who  by  her 
courage  would  shrivel  up  the  dangers  that  so  beset 
the  timorous.  She  was  French,  and  that  fact  by 
itself  meant  that  whole  layers  of  equivocation  had 
been  cut  through,  whole  sets  of  intricacies  avoided. 

In  order  to  get  the  full  shock  of  her  individual 
ity,  I  took  her  one  afternoon  to  a  model  little 
English  tea-room  on  the  rue  de  Rivoli,  where 
normal  Britishers  were  reading  Punch  and  the 

[72] 


Spectator  over  their  jam  and  cake.  The  little 
flurry  of  disapprobation  and  the  hostile  stare 
which  our  appearance  elicited  from  the  well-bred 
families  and  discreet  young  men  at  the  tables,  the 
flaring  incongruity  of  her  dark,  lithe,  inscrutable 
personality  in  this  bland,  vacuous  British  atmos 
phere,  showed  me  as  could  nothing  else  how  hard 
was  the  gem-like  flame  with  which  she  burned. 

As  we  walked  in  the  Luxembourg  and  along  the 
quays,  or  sat  on  the  iron  chairs  in  the  gardens  of 
the  Pare  Monceau  or  the  Trocadero,  our  friend 
ship  became  a  sort  of  intellectual  orgy.  The  dif 
ficulty  of  following  the  pace  of  her  flying  tongue 
and  of  hammering  and  beating  my  own  thoughts 
into  the  unaccustomed  French  was  fatiguing,  but 
it  was  the  fascinating  weariness  of  exploration. 
My  first  idle  remarks  about  God  touched  off  a 
whole  battery  of  modern  ideas.  None  of  the  so 
cial  currents  of  the  day  seemed  to  have  passed  her 
by,  though  she  had  been  immured  so  long  in  her 
sleepy  convent  at  Bourges.  She  had  that  same 
interest  and  curiosity  about  other  classes  and  con 
ditions  of  life  which  animates  us  here  in  America, 
and  the  same  desire  to  do  something  effective 
against  the  misery  of  poverty. 

[73] 


I  had  teased  her  a  little  about  her  academic, 
untried  ideas,  and  in  grave  reproof  she  told  me, 
one  afternoon,  as  we  stood — of  all  places! — on 
the  porch  of  the  Little  Trianon  at  Versailles,  a 
touching  story  of  a  family  of  the  poorest  of  the 
Parisian  poor,  whom  she  and  her  mother  visited 
and  helped  to  get  work.  She  did  not  think  charity 
accomplished  very  much,  and  flamed  at  the  word 
"Socialism,"  although  she  had  not  yet  had  its 
program  made  very  clear  to  her. 

But  mostly  she  was  feminist, — an  ardent 
disciple  in  that  singularly  uncomplicated  and 
happy  march  of  the  Frenchwomen,  already  so 
practically  emancipated,  toward  a  definite  social 
recognition  '  of  that  liberation.  The  normal 
Frenchwoman,  in  all  but  the  richer  classes,  is  an 
economic  asset  to  her  country.  And  economic 
independence  was  a  cardinal  dogma  in  my  friend's 
faith.  She  was  already  taking  a  secretarial 
course,  in  order  to  ensure  her  ability  to  make  her 
living?  and  she  looked  forward  quite  eagerly  to  a 
career. 

Marriage  was  in  considerable  disfavor;  it  had 
still  the  taint  of  the  Church  upon  it,  while  the  civil 
marriage  seemed,  with  the  only  recently  surren- 

[74] 


derecl  necessary  parental  consent,  to  mark  the  sub 
jection  of  the  younger  to  the  older  generation. 
These  barriers  were  now  removed,  but  the  evil 
savor  of  the  institution  lingered  on.  My  friend, 
like  all  the  French  intellectuals,  was  all  for  the 
"union  libre,"  but  it  would  have  to  be  loyal  unto 
death.  It  was  all  the  more  inspiring  as  an  ideal, 
,  because  it  would  be  perhaps  hard  to  obtain. 
Men,  she  was  inclined  to  think,  were  usually 
malhonnete,  but  she  might  find  some  day  a  man  of 
complete  sympathy  and  complete  loyalty.  But 
she  did  not  care.  Life  was  life,  freedom  was 
freedom,  and  the  glory  of  being  a  woman  in  the 
modern  world  was  enough  for  her. 

The  French  situation  was  perhaps  quite  as  bad 
as  it  was  pictured.  Friendship  between  a  girl  and 
a  young  man  was  almost  impossible.  It  was  that 
they  usually  wished  to  love  her.  She  did  not 
mind  them  on  the  streets.  The  students — oh,  the 
students! — were  frightfully  annoying;  but  per 
haps  one  gave  a  gifte  and  passed  rapidly  on.  Her 
parents,  before  she  had  become  genuinely  the  cap 
tain  of  her  soul,  had  tried  to  marry  her  off  in  the 
orthodox  French  way.  She  had  had  four  pro 
posals.  Risking  the  clean  candor  of  the  French 

1 75 1 


soul,  I  became  curious  and  audacious.  So  she 
dramatized  for  me,  without  a  trace  of  self-con 
sciousness,  a  wonderful  little  scene  of  provincial 
manners.  The  stiff  young  Frenchman  making 
his  stilted  offer,  her  self-possessed  reluctance,  her 
final  refusal,  were  given  in  inimitable  style. 
These  incidents,  which  in  the  life  of  a  little 
American  bourgeoise  would  have  been  crises  or 
triumphs,  and,  at  any  rate,  unutterably  hoarded 
secrets,  were  given  with  a  cold  frankness  which 
showed  refreshingly  to  what  insignificance  mar 
riage  was  relegated  in  her  life.  She  wished,  she 
said,  to  vivre  sa  vie — to  live  her  life.  If  mar 
riage  fitted  in  with  her  living  of  her  life,  it  might 
take  her.  It  should  never  submerge  or  deflect  her. 
Countless  Frenchwomen,  in  defiance  of  the  stri 
dent  Anglo-Saxon  belief,  were  able  both  to  keep  a 
household  and  to  earn  their  own  living;  and  why 
not  she  also?  She  would  always  be  free;  and  her 
black  eyes  burned  as  they  looked  out  so  fearlessly 
into  a  world  that  was  to  be  all  hers,  because  she 
expected  nothing  from  it. 

About  this  world,  she  had  few  illusions.  To  its 
worldlinesses  and  glitter  she  showed  really  a 
superb  indifference.  I  brutally  tried  to  trap  her 

[76] 


into  a  confession  that  she  spurned  it  only  because 
it  might  be  closed  to  her  through  lack  of  money  or 
prestige.  Her  eloquent  eyes  almost  slew  me  with 
vivacious  denial.  She  despised  these  "dolls" 
whose  only  business  in  life  was  to  wear  clothes. 
Her  own  sober  black  was  not  affectation,  but  only 
her  way  of  showing  that  she  was  more  than  a 
poupee.  She  did  not  say  it,  but  I  quite  appre 
ciated,  and  I  knew  well  that  she  knew,  how  charm 
ing  a  poupee  she  might  have  made. 

Several  of  her  friends  were  gay  and  worldly. 
She  spoke  of  them  with  charming  frankness,  touch 
ing  off,  with  a  tone  quite  clean  of  malice,  all  their 
little  worthlessnesses  and  futilities.  Some  of  this 
world,  indeed,  shaded  off  into  unimaginable 
nuances,  but  she  was  wholly  aware  of  its  sig 
nificance.  In  the  inimitable  French  way,  she  dis 
dained  to  use  its  errors  as  a  lever  to  elevate  her 
own  virtues. 

in 

Her  blazing  candor  lighted  up  for  me  every 
part  of  her  world.  We  skirted  abysses,  but  the 
language  helped  us  wonderfully  through.  French 
has  worn  tracks  in  so  many  fields  of  experience 

[77] 


where  English  blunders  either  boorishly  or  senti 
mentally.  French  is  made  for  illumination  and 
clear  expression;  it  has  kept  its  purity  and  crisp- 
ness  and  can  express, without  shamefacedness  or 
bungling,  attitudes  and  interpretations  which  the 
Anglo-Saxon  fatuously  hides. 

My  friend  was  dimly  sensible  of  some  such 
contrast.  I  think  she  had  as  much  difficulty  in 
making  me  out  as  I  had  in  making  her  out.  She 
was  very  curious  as  to  how  she  compared  with 
American  girls.  She  had  once  met  one  but  had 
found  her,  though  not  a  doll,  yet  not  sympathique 
and  little  understandable.  I  had  to  tell  my  friend 
how  untranslatable  she  was.  The  Anglo-Saxon, 
I  had  to  tell  her,  was  apt  to  be  either  a  school- 
child  or  a  middle-aged  person.  To  the  first,  ideas 
were  strange  and  disturbing.  To  the  second,  they 
were  a  nuisance  and  a  bore.  I  almost  assured  her 
that  in  America  she  would  be  considered  a  quite 
horrible  portent.  Her  brimming  idealism  would 
make  everybody  uncomfortable.  The  sensual  de 
light  which  she  took  in  thinking,  the  way  her  ideas 
were  all  warmly  felt  and  her  feelings  luminously 
expressed,  would  adapt  her  badly  to  a  world  of 
school-children  and  tired  business  men.  I  tried  to 

[78] 


go  over  for  her  the  girls  of  her  age  whom  I  had 
known.  How  charming  they  were  to  be  sure, 
but,  even  when  they  had  ideas,  how  strangely  in 
articulate  they  sometimes  were,  and,  if  they  were 
articulate,  how  pedantic  and  priggish  they  seemed 
to  the  world  about  them!  And  what  forests  of 
reticences  and  exaggerated  values  there  were,  and 
curious  illogicalities  How  jealous  they  were  of 
their  personalities,  and  what  a  suspicious  and  in 
dividualistic  guard  they  kept  over  their  candor 
and  sincerities!  I  was  very  gay  and  perhaps  a 
little  cruel. 

She  listened  eagerly,  but  I  think  she  did  not 
quite  understand.  If  one  were  not  frankly  a  doll, 
was  not  life  a  great  swirl  to  be  grappled  with  and 
clarified,  and  thought  and  felt  about4?  And  as 
for  her  personality,  the  more  she  gave  the  more 
she  had.  She  would  take  the  high  risks  of  friend 
ship. 

To  cross  the  seas  and  come  upon  my  own  en 
thusiasms  and  ideals  vibrating  with  so  intense  a 
glow  seemed  an  amazing  fortune.  It  was  like 
coming  upon  the  same  design,  tinted  in  novel  and 
picturesque  colors  of  a  finer  harmony.  In  this  in 
tellectual  flirtation,  carried  on  in  musee  and  gar- 

[79] 


den  and  on  quay  throughout  that  cloudless  April, 
I  began  to  suspect  some  gigantic  flattery.  Was 
her  enthusiasm  sincere,  and  her  clean-cutting  ideas, 
or  had  she  by  some  subtle  intuition  anticipated 
me?  Did  she  think,  or  was  it  to  be  expected  of 
me,  that  I  should  fall  in  love  with  her?  But 
perhaps  there  was  a  touch  of  the  too  foreign  in 
her  personality.  And  if  I  had  fallen  in  love,  I 
know  it  would  not  have  been  with  herself.  It 
would  have  been  with  the  Frenchness  of  her,  and 
perhaps  was.  It  would  have  been  with  the  eternal 
youth  of  France  that  she  was.  For  she  could 
never  have  been  so  very  glowing  if  France  had  not 
been  full  of  her.  Her  charm  and  appeal  were  far 
broader  than  herself.  It  took  in  all  that  rare 
spiritual  climate  where  one  absorbs  ideas  and 
ideals  as  the  earth  drinks  in  rain. 

She  was  of  that  young  France  with  its  luminous 
understanding,  its  personal  verve,  its  light  of  ex 
pression,  its  way  of  feeling  its  ideas  and  thinking 
its  emotions,  its  deathless  loyalty  which  betrays 
only  at  the  clutch  of  some  deeper  loyalty.  She 
adored  her  country  and  all  its  mystic  values  and 
aspirations.  When  she  heard  I  was  going  to  Ger 
many,  she  actually  winced  with  pain.  She  could 

[80] 


scarcely  believe  it.  I  fell  back  at  once  to  the 
position  of  a  vulgar  traveler,  visiting  even  the 
lands  of  the  barbarians.  They  were  her  country's 
enemies,  and  some  day  they  would  attack.  France 
awaited  the  onslaught  fatalistically.  She  did  not 
want  to  be  a  man,  but  she  wished  that  they  would 
let  women  be  soldiers.  If  the  war  came,  how 
ever,  she  would  enlist  at  once  as  a  Red  Cross  nurse. 
She  thrilled  at  the  thought  that  perhaps  there  she 
could  serve  to  the  uttermost. 

And  the  war  has  come,  hot  upon  her  en 
thusiasms.  She  must  have  been  long  since  in  the 
field,  either  at  the  army  stations,  or  moving  about 
among  the  hospitals  of  Paris,  her  heart  full  of 
pride  and  pity  for  the  France  which  she  loved  and 
felt  so  well,  and  of  whose  deathless  spirit  she  was, 
for  me,  at  least,  so  glowing  a  symbol. 


FERGUS 

MY  friend  Fergus  has  all  the  characteristics  of 
genius  except  the  divine  fire.  The  guardian  angel 
who  presided  at  his  birth  and  set  in  order  all  his 
delicate  appreciations  just  forgot  to  start  flowing 
the  creative  current.  Fergus  was  born  to  suffer 
the  pangs  of  artistic  desire  without  the  gushing 
energy  that  would  have  moulded  artistic  form. 
It  was  perhaps  difficult  enough  to  produce  him  as 
it  was.  There  is  much  that  is  clearly  impossible 
about  him.  His  father  is  a  bluff  old  Irish  news 
paper  compositor,  with  the  obstinately  genial  air 
of  a  man  who  cannot  believe  that  life  will  not 
some  day  do  something  for  him.  His  mother  is 
a  French-Canadian,  jolly  and  stout,  who  plays  old 
Irish  and  French  melodies  on  the  harp,  and 
mothers  the  young  Catholic  girls  of  the  crowded 
city  neighborhood  in  which  they  live.  She  has 
the  slightly  surprised  background  of  never  realized 
prosperity.  Fergus  is  an  old  child,  and  moves  in 

[82] 


the  dark  little  flat,  with  its  green  plush  furniture, 
its  prints  of  the  Great  Commoner  and  Lake 
Killarney,  its  Bible  texts  of  the  Holy  Name,  with 
the  detached  condescension  of  an  exiled  prince. 
He  is  very  dark  and  finely  formed,  of  the  type 
that  would  be  taken  for  a  Spaniard  in  France  and 
an  Italian  in  Spain,  and  his  manners  have  the  dis 
tinction  of  the  born  aristocrat. 

The  influences  of  that  close  little  Catholic  so 
ciety  in  which  he  was  brought  up  he  has  shed  as  a 
duck  sheds  water.  His  mother  wished  him  to  be  a 
Jesuit.  The  quickness  of  his  mind,  the  refinement 
and  hauteur  of  his  manner,  intoxicated  her  with 
the  assurance  of  his  priestly  future.  His  father, 
however,  inclined  towards  the  insurance  business. 
Fergus  himself  viewed  his  future  with  cold  dis 
interestedness.  When  I  first  met  him  he  had  just 
emerged  from  a  year  of  violin  study  at  a  music 
school.  The  violin  had  been  an  escape  from  the 
twin  horrors  that  had  menaced  him.  On  his 
parents'  anxiety  that  he  "make  something  of  him 
self"  he  looked  with  some  disdain.  He  did,  how 
ever,  feel  to  a  certain  extent  their  chagrin  at  find 
ing  so  curious  and  aristocratic  a  person  in  their 
family,  and  he  allowed  himself,  with  a  fine 

[83] 


stoicism  as  of  an  exiled  prince  supporting  himself 
until  the  revolution  was  crushed  and  he  was  rein 
stated  in  his  possessions,  to  be  buried  in  an  insur 
ance  broker's  office.  At  this  time  he  spent  his 
evenings  in  the  dim  vaulted  reading-room  of  a 
public  library  composing  music,  or  in  wandering 
in  the  park  with  his  friends,  discussing  philosophy. 
His  little  music  notebook  and  Gomperz's  "Greek 
Thinkers"  were  rarely  out  of  his  hand. 

Harmony  and  counterpoint  had  not  appealed  to 
him  at  the  Conservatory,  but  now  the  themes  that 
raced  and  rocketed  through  his  head  compelled 
him  to  composition.  The  bloodless  scherzos  and 
allegros  which  he  produced  and  tried  to  play  for 
me  on  his  rickety  piano  had  so  archaic  a  flavor  as 
to  suggest  that  Fergus  was  inventing  anew  the  art 
of  music,  somewhat  as  our  childhood  is  supposed 
to  pass  through  all  the  stages  of  the  evolution  of 
the  race.  As  he  did  not  seem  to  pass  beyond  a 
pre-Bachian  stage,  he  began  to  feel  at  length,  he 
told  me,  that  there  was  something  lacking  in  his 
style.  But  he  was  afraid  that  routine  study  would 
dull  his  inspiration.  It  was  time  that  he  needed, 
and  not  instruction.  And  time  was  slipping  so 


quickly  away.  He  was  twenty-two,  and  he  could 
not  grasp  or  control  it. 

When  summer  was  near  he  came  to  me  with  an 
idea.  His  office  work  was  insupportable.  Even 
accepting  that  one  dropped  eight  of  the  best  hours 
of  one's  every  day  into  a  black  and  bottomless  pit 
in  exchange  for  the  privilege  of  remaining  alive, 
such  a  life  was  almost  worse  than  none.  I  had 
friends  who  were  struggling  with  a  large  country 
farm.  He  wished  to  offer  them  his  services  as 
farmhand  on  half-time  in  exchange  for  simple 
board  and  lodging.  Working  in  the  morning,  he 
would  have  all  the  rest  of  his  pastoral  day  for 
writing  music. 

Before  I  could  communicate  to  him  my  friends' 
reluctance  to  this  proposal,  he  told  me  that  his 
musical  inspiration  had  entirely  •  left  him.  He 
was  now  spending  all  his  spare  time  in  the  Art 
Museum,  discovering  tastes  and  delights  that  he 
had  not  known  were  in  him.  Why  had  not  some 
one  told  him  of  the  joy  of  sitting  and  reading 
Plato  in  those  glowing  rooms'?  The  Museum  was 
more  significant  when  I  walked  in  it  with  Fergus. 
His  gracious  bearing  almost  seemed  to  please  the 

[85] 


pictures  themselves.  He  walked  as  a  princely 
connoisseur  through  his  own  historic  galleries. 

When  I  saw  Fergus  next,  however,  a  physical 
depression  had  fallen  upon  him.  He  had  gone 
into  a  vegetarian  diet  and  was  enfeebling  himself 
with  Spartan  fare.  He  was  disturbed  by  loneli 
ness,  the  erotic  world  gnawed  persistently  at  him, 
and  all  the  Muses  seemed  to  have  left  him.  But 
in  his  gloominess,  in  the  fine  discrimination  with 
which  he  analyzed  his  helplessness,  in  the  noble 
despair  with  which  he  faced  an  insoluble  world, 
he  was  more  aristocratic  than  ever.  He  was  not 
like  one  who  had  never  attained  genius,  fame, 
voluptuous  passion,  riches,  he  was  rather  as  one 
who  had  been  bereft  of  all  these  things. 

Returning  last  autumn  from  a  year  abroad,  dur 
ing  which  I  had  not  heard  a  word  of  Fergus,  I 
found  he  had  turned  himself  into  a  professional 
violin-teacher.  The  insurance  job  had  passed 
out,  and  for  a  few  weeks  he  had  supported  him 
self  by  playing  the  organ  in  a  small  Catholic 
church.  There  was  jugglery  with  his  salary,  how 
ever,  and  it  annoyed  him  to  be  so  intimate  a  figure 
in  a  ritual  to  which  he  could  only  refer  in  irony. 
Priests  whose  "will  to  power"  background  he 
[86] 


analyzed  to  me  with  Nietzschean  fidelity  always 
repelled  him. 

He  was  saved  from  falling  back  on  the  indus 
trious  parents  who  had  so  strangely  borne  him  by 
an  offer  to  play  the  harmonium  in  the  orchestra  of 
a  fashionable  restaurant.  To  this  opportunity  of 
making  eighteen  dollars  a  week  he  had  evidently 
gone  with  a  new  and  pleasurable  sense  of  the 
power  of  wealth.  It  was  easy,  he  said,  but  the 
heat  and  the  lights,  the  food  and  the  long  evening 
hours  fairly  nauseated  him,  and  he  gave  the  work 
up. 

All  this  time,  I  gathered,  his  parents  had  been 
restive  over  a  certain  economic  waste.  They 
seemed  to  feel  that  his  expensive  musical  educa 
tion  should  be  capitalized  more  firmly  arid  more 
profitably.  His  mother  had  even  deplored  his 
lack  of  ambition.  She  had  explored  and  had  dis 
covered  that  one  made  much  money  as  a  "vaude 
ville  act."  He  had  obtained  a  trial  at  an  Upper 
Bronx  moving-picture  vaudeville  theater.  Fergus 
told  me  that  the  nervous  girl  who  had  gone  on  the 
stage  before  him  had  been  cut  short  in  the  middle 
of  her  "Fox-Trot  Lullaby,"  or  whatever  her  song 
was,  by  hostile  yells  from  the  audience.  Fergus 


himself  went  on  in  rather  a  depressed  mood,  and 
hardly  did  himself  justice.  He  played  the  Bach 
air,  and  a  short  movement  from  Brahms.  He  did 
not,  however,  get  that  rapport  with  his  audience 
which  he  felt  the  successful  vaudeville  artist 
should  feel.  They  had  not  yelled  at  him,  but 
they  had  refused  to  applaud,  and  the  circuit  man 
ager  had  declined  to  engage  him. 

After  this  experience  it  occurred  to  Fergus  that 
he  liked  to  teach,  and  that  his  training  had  made 
him  a  professional  musician.  His  personality,  he 
felt,  was  not  unfavorable.  By  beginning  modest 
ly  he  saw  no  reason  why  he  should  not  build  up  a 
clientele  and  an  honorable  competence.  When  I 
saw  him  a  week  later  at  the  Music  Settlement, 
he  told  me  that  there  was  no  longer  any  doubt 
that  he  had  found  his  lifework.  His  fees  are 
very  small  and  his  pupils  are  exacting.  He  has 
practised  much  besides.  He  told  me  the  other 
day  that  teaching  was  uninspiring  drudgery.  He 
had  decided  to  give  it  up,  and  compose  songs. 

Whenever  I  see  Fergus  I  have  a  slight  quicken 
ing  of  the  sense  of  life.  His  rich  and  rather 
somber  personality  makes  all  ordinary  back 
grounds  tawdry.  He  knows  so  exactly  what  he 
[88] 


is  doing  and  what  he  is  feeling.  I  do  not  think 
he  reads  very  much,  but  he  breathes  in  from  the 
air  around  him  certain  large  aethestic  and  philos 
ophical  ideas.  There  are  many  philosophies  and 
many  artists,  however,  that  he  has  never  heard  of, 
and  this  ignorance  of  the  concrete  gives  one  a  fine 
pleasure  of  impressing  him.  One  can  pour  into 
receptive  ears  judgments  and  enthusiasms  that 
have  long  ago  been  taken  for  granted  by  one's 
more  sophisticated  friends.  His  taste  in  art  as  in 
music  is  impeccable,  and  veers  strongly  to  the 
classics — Rembrandt  and  the  Greeks,  as  Bach  and 
Beethoven. 

Fergus  has  been  in  love,  but  he  does  not  talk 
much  about  it.  A  girl  in  his  words  is  somewhat 
dark  and  inscrutable.  She  always  has  something 
haunting  and  finely-toned  about  her,  whoever  she 
may  be.  I  always  think  of  the  clothed  lady  in 
the  flowing  silks,  in  Titian's  "Sacred  and  Profane 
Love."  Yet  withal  Fergus  gives  her  a  touch  of 
the  allurement  of  her  nude  companion.  His  re 
serve,  I  think,  always  keeps  these  persons  very 
dusky  and  distant.  His  chastity  is  a  result  of  his 
fineness  of  taste  rather  than  of  feeble  desire  or 
conscious  control.  That  impersonal  passion 


which  descends  on  people  like  Fergus  in  a  sultry 
cloud  he  tells  me  he  contrives  to  work  off  into  his 
violin.  I  sometimes  wonder  if  a  little  more  of  it 
with  a  better  violin  would  have  made  him  an 
artist. 

But  destiny  has  just  clipped  his  wings  so  that 
he  must  live  a  life  of  noble  leisure  instead  of 
artistic  creation.  His  unconscious  interest  is  the 
art  of  life.  Against  a  background  of  Harlem  flats 
and  stodgy  bourgeois  prejudices  he  works  out  this 
life  of  otium  cum  dignitate,  calm  speculation  and 
artistic  appreciation  that  Nietzsche  glorifies.  On 
any  code  that  would  judge  him  by  the  seven  dol 
lars  a  week  which  is  perhaps  his  average  income  he 
looks  with  cold  disdain.  He  does  not  demand 
that  the  world  give  him  a  living.  He  did  not  ask 
to  come  into  it,  but  being  here  he  will  take  it  with 
candor.  Sometimes  I  think  he  is  very  patient 
with  life.  Probably  he  is  not  happy.  This  is 
not  important.  As  his  candor  and  his  apprecia 
tions  refresh  me,  I  wonder  if  the  next  best  thing 
to  producing  works  of  art  is  not  to  be,  like  Fergus, 
a  work  of  art  one's  self. 


[90] 


THE  PROFESSOR 

THE  Professor  is  a  young  man,  but  he  had  so 
obviously  the  misfortune  of  growing  up  too  early 
that  he  seems  already  like  a  mournful  relic  of 
irrevocable  days.  His  ardent  youth  was  spent  in 
that  halcyon  time  of  the  early  nineteen-hundreds 
when  all  was  innocence  in  the  heart  of  young 
America.  "When  I  was  in  college,"  the  Professor 
often  says,  "all  this  discussion  of  social  questions 
was  unknown  to  us.  The  growing  seriousness  of 
the  American  college  student  is  an  inspiring  phe 
nomenon  in  our  contemporary  life." 

In  those  days  the  young  men  who  felt  an  urge 
within  them  went  in  for  literature.  It  was  still 
the  time  when  Presbyterian  clergymen  and  courtly 
Confederate  generals  were  contributing  the  inspi 
ration  of  their  ripe  scholarship  to  the  younger  gen 
eration.  It  was  the  time  when  Brander  Matthews 
still  thrilled  the  world  of  criticism  with  his  scin 
tillating  Gallic  wit  and  his  cosmopolitan  wealth 

[91] 


of  friendships.  The  young  men  of  that  time  are 
still  a  race  apart.  Through  these  literary  masters 
they  touched  the  intimate  life  of  literature;  they 
knew  Kipling  and  Stevenson,  Arthur  Symons  and 
the  great  Frenchmen,  and  felt  themselves  one  with 
the  charmed  literary  brotherhood  throughout  the 
world.  It  was  still  the  time  when,  free  from 
philosophic  or  sociologic  taint,  our  American 
youth  was  privileged  to  breathe  in  from  men  like 
Henry  van  Dyke  and  Charles  Eliot  Norton  the 
ideals  of  the  scholar  and  the  gentleman. 

The  Professor's  sensitive  talent  soon  asserted 
itself.  With  Wordsworth  he  had  absorbed  him 
self  into  the  circumambient  life  of  nature  and 
made  the  great  reconciliation  between  her  and 
man.  With  Shelley  he  had  dared  unutterable 
things  and  beaten  his  wings  against  the  stars. 
With  Tennyson  he  had  shuddered  pensively  on 
the  brink  of  declining  faith.  With  Carlyle  he 

had  felt  the  call  of  duty,  and  all  the  revulsion 

• 

•  against  a  sordid  and  mechanical  age.  With  Ar 
nold  he  had  sought  the  sweetness  and  light  which 
should  come  to  him  from  knowing  all  the  best  that 
had  been  said  and  thought  in  the  world.  The 
Professor  had  scarcely  begun  to  write  verse  before 

[92] 


he  found  himself  victor  in  a  prize  poetry  contest 
which  had  enlisted  the  talent  of  all  the  best  poets 
of  America.  He  often  tells  his  students  of  the  in 
toxication  of  that  evening  when  he  encircled  the 
dim  vaulted  corridors  of  the  college  library,  while 
his  excited  brain  beat  out  the  golden  couplets  of 
the  now  celebrated  "Ganymede."  The  success 
of  this  undergraduate  stripling  fell  like  a  thunder 
bolt  upon  the  literary  world.  Already  conse 
crated  to  the  scholar's  career,  he  found  fallen  upon 
him  the  miracle  of  the  creative  artist.  But  Shel 
ley  and  Keats  had  had  their  greatness  very  early, 
too.  And  when,  at  the  early  age  of  twenty-three, 
the  Professor  published  his  masterly  doctoral  dis 
sertation  on  "The  Anonymous  Lyrics  of  the  Four 
teenth  Century,"  he  at  once  attained  in  the  world 
of  literary  scholarship  the  distinction  that  "Gany 
mede"  had  given  him  in  the  world  of  poetry. 

His  career  has  not  frustrated  those  bright  prom- 
sises.  His  rare  fusion  of  scholarship  and  genius 
won  him  the  chair  of  English  Literature  in  one  of 
our  most  rapidly  growing  colleges,  where  he  has 
incomparable  opportunities  for  influencing  the 
ideals  of  the  young  men  under  him.  His  courses 
are  among  the  most  popular  in  the  college.  Al- 

[93] 


though  his  special  scholarly  research  has  been  de 
voted  to  pre-Elizabethan  literature,  he  is  at  home 
in  all  the  ages.  His  lectures  are  models  of  care 
fully  weighed  criticism.  "My  purpose,"  he  says, 
"is  to  give  my  boys  the  spirit  of  the  authors,  and 
let  them  judge  between  them  for  themselves." 
Consequently,  however  much  Swinburne  may  re 
volt  him,  the  Professor  expounds  the  carnal  and 
desperate  message  of  that  poet  with  the  same  care 
which  he  gives  to  his  beloved  Wordsworth. 
"When  they  have  heard  them  all,"  he  told  me 
once,  "I  can  trust  my  boys  to  feel  the  insufficiency 
of  any  purely  materialistic  interpretation  of  life." 
Impeccable  as  is  his  critical  taste  where  the  clas 
sics  are  concerned,  he  is  reluctant  about  giving  his 
opinion  to  those  students  who  come  for  a  clue 
through  the  current  literary  maze.  Stevenson 
was  early  canonized,  and  the  Professor  speaks  with 
charm  and  fulness  upon  him,  but  G.  B.  S.  and 
Galsworthy  must  wait.  "Time,  perhaps,"  says 
the  Professor,  "will  put  the  seal  of  approval  upon 
them.  Meanwhile  our  judgment  can  be  only  ten 
tative."  His  fine  objectivity  is  shown  in  those 
lists  of  the  hundred  best  books  of  the  year  which 
he  is  sometimes  asked  to  compile  for  the  Sunday 

[94] 


newspapers.  Rarely  does  a  new  author,  never 
does  a  young  author,  appear  among  them.  Schol 
arly  criticism,  the  Professor  feels,  can  scarcely  be 
too  cautious. 

The  Professor's  inspiring  influence  upon  his 
students,  however,  is  not  confined  to  his  courses. 
He  has  formed  a  little  literary  society  in  the 
college,  which  meets  weekly  to  discuss  with  him 
the  larger  cultural  issues  of  the  time.  Lately  he 
has  become  interested  in  philosophy.  "In  my 
day,"  he  once  told  me,  "we  young  literary  men 
did  not  study  philosophy."  But  now,  professor 
that  he  is,  he  goes  to  sit  at  the  feet  of  the  great 
metaphysicians  of  his  college.  He  has  been  im 
mensely  stirred  by  the  social  and  moral  awakening 
of  recent  years.  He  willingly  allows  discussions 
of  socialism  in  his  little  society,  but  is  inclined  to 
deprecate  the  fanaticism  of  college  men  who  lose 
their  sense  of  proportion  on  social  questions.  But 
in  his  open-mindedness  to  radical  thought  he  is  an 
inspiration  to  all  who  meet  him.  To  be  radical, 
he  tells  his  boys,  is  a  necessary  part  of  experience. 
In  professorial  circles  he  is  looked  upon  as  a 
veritable  revolutionist,  for  he  encourages  the  dis 
cussion  of  vital  questions  even  in  the  classroom. 

[95] 


Questions  such  as  evolution,  capital  punishment, 
free  thought,  protection  and  education  of  women, 
furnish  the  themes  for  composition.  And  from 
the  essays  of  the  masters — Macaulay,  Huxley, 
John  Stuart  Mill  and  Matthew  Arnold — come  the 
great  arguments  as  freshly  and  as  vitally  as  of 
yore.  Literature,  says  the  Professor,  is  not 
merely  language;  it  is  ideas.  We  must  above  all, 
he  says,  teach  our  undergraduates  to  think. 

Although  the  Professor  is  thus  responsive  to  the 
best  radicalisms  of  the  day,  he  does  not  let  their 
shock  break  the  sacred  chalice  of  the  past.  He  is 
deeply  interested  in  the  religious  life  of  his  col 
lege.  A  devout  Episcopalian,  he  deplores  the 
callousness  of  the  present  generation  towards  the 
immemorial  beauty  of  ritual  and  dogma.  The 
empty  seats  of  the  college  chapel  nil  him  with 
dismay.  One  of  his  most  beautiful  poems  pic 
tures  his  poignant  sensations  as  he  comes  from  a 
quiet  hour  within  its  dim,  organ-haunted  shadows 
out  into  the  sunlight,  where  the  careless  athletes 
are  running  bare-leggedly  past  him,  unmindful  of 
the  eternal  things. 

I  think  I  like  the  Professor  best  in  his  study  at 
home,  when  he  talks  on  art  and  life  with  one  or 

[96] 


two  respectful  students.  On  the  wall  is  a  framed 
autograph  of  Wordsworth,  picked  up  in  some 
London  bookshop;  and  a  framed  letter  of  appre 
ciation  from  Richard  Watson  Gilder.  On  the 
table  stands  a  richly-bound  volume  of  "Gany 
mede"  with  some  of  the  very  manuscripts,  as  he 
has  shown  us,  bound  in  among  the  leaves.  His 
deep  and  measured  voice  flows  pleasantly  on  in 
anecdotes  of  the  Authors'  Club,  or  reminiscences 
of  the  golden  past.  As  one  listens,  the  glamor 
steals  upon  one.  This  is  the  literary  life,  grave, 
respected,  serene.  All  else  is  hectic  rush,  modern 
ideas  a  futile  babel.  It  is  men  like  the  Professor 
who  keep  the  luster  of  scholarship  bright,  who 
hold  true  the  life  of  the  scholar  and  the  gentleman 
as  it  was  lived  of  old.  In  a  world  of  change  he 
keeps  the  faith  pure. 


[97] 


ONE  OF  OUR  CONQUERORS 

WHEN  Dr.  Alexander  Mackintosh  Butcher  was 
elected  to  the  presidency  of  Pluribus  University 
ten  years  ago,  there  was  general  agreement  that 
in  selecting  a  man  who  was  not  only  a  distin 
guished  educator  but  an  executive  of  marked  busi 
ness  ability  the  trustees  had  done  honor  to  them 
selves  and  their  university  as  well  as  to  the  new 
president.  For  Dr.  Butcher  had  that  peculiar 
genius  which  would  have  made  him  as  successful 
in  Wall  Street  or  in  a  governor's  chair  as  in  the 
classroom.  Every  alumnus  of  Pluribus  knows  the 
story  told  of  the  young  Alexander  Mackintosh 
Butcher,  standing  at  the  age  of  twenty-two  at  the 
threshold  of  a  career.  Eager,  energetic,  with  a 
brilliant  scholastic  record  behind  him,  it  was  diffi 
cult  to  decide  into  what  profession  he  should  throw 
his  powerful  talents.  To  his  beloved  and  aged 
president  the  young  man  went  for  counsel.  "My 
boy,"  said  the  good  old  man,  "remember  that  no 

[98] 


profession  offers  nobler  opportunities  for  service 
to  humanity  than  that  of  education."  And  what 
should  he  teach?  "Philosophy  is  the  noblest 
study  of  man."  And  a  professor  of  philosophy 
the  young  Butcher  speedily  became. 

Those  who  were  so  fortunate  as  to  study  philo 
sophy  under  him  at  Pluribus  will  never  forget  how 
uncompromisingly  he  preached  absolute  idealism, 
the  Good,  the  True  and  the  Beautiful,  or  how 
witheringly  he  excoriated  the  mushroom  philoso 
phies  which  were  springing  up  to  challenge  the 
eternal  verities.  I  have  heard  his  old  students 
remark  the  secret  anguish  which  must  have  been 
his  when  later,  as  president  of  the  university,  he 
was  compelled  to  entertain  the  famous  Swiss 
philosopher,  Monsfilius,  whose  alluring  empiricism 
was  taking  the  philosophic  world  by  storm. 

Dr.  Butcher's  philosophic  acuteness  is  only 
equaled  by  his  political  rectitude.  Indeed,  it  is 
as  philosopher-politician  that  he  holds  the  unique 
place  he  does  in  our  American  life,  injecting  into 
the  petty  issues  of  the  political  arena  the  immu 
table  principles  of  Truth.  Early  conscious  of  his 
duty  as  a  man  and  a  citizen,  he  joined  the  historic 
party  which  had  earned  the  eternal  allegiance  of 

[99] 


the  nation  by  rescuing  it  from  slavery.  By  faith 
ful  service  to  the  chiefs  of  his  state  organization, 
first  under  the  powerful  Flatt,  and  later  under  the 
well-known  Harnes,  himself  college-bred  and  a 
political  philosopher  of  no  mean  merit,  the  young 
Dr.  Butcher  worked  his  way  up  through  ward 
captain  to  the  position  of  district  leader.  The 
practical  example  of  Dr.  Butcher,  the  scholar  and 
educator,  leaving  the  peace  of  his  academic  shades 
to  carry  the  banner  in  the  service  of  his  party 
ideals  of  Prosperity  and  Protection  has  been  an 
inspiration  to  thousands  of  educated  men  in  these 
days  of  civic  cowardice.  When,  three  years  ago, 
his  long  and  faithful  services  were  rewarded  by 
the  honor  of  second  place  on  the  Presidential  ticket 
which  swept  the  great  states  of  Mormonia  and 
Green  Mountain,  there  were  none  of  his  friends 
and  admirers  who  felt  that  the  distinction  was 
undeserved. 

President  Butcher  is  frequently  called  into  the 
councils  of  the  party  whenever  there  are  resolu 
tions  to  be  drawn  up  or  statements  of  philosophic 
principle  to  be  issued.  He  is  in  great  demand 
also  as  chairman  of  state  conventions,  which  his 
rare  academic  distinction  lifts  far  above  the  usual 

(  100] 


level  of  such  affairs.  Jt  was  at  one  of  thtsc, con 
ventions  that  he  made  the  memorable  speech  in 
which  he  drew  the  analogy  between  the  immuta 
bility  of  Anglo-Saxon  political  institutions  and 
the  multiplication  table.  To  the  applause  of  the 
keen  and  hard-headed  business  men  and  lawyers 
who  sat  as  delegates  under  him,  he  scored  with 
matchless  satire  the  idea  of  progress  in  politics, 
and  demonstrated  to  their  complete  satisfaction 
that  it  was  as  absurd  to  tinker  with  the  fundamen 
tals  of  our  political  system  as  it  would  be  to  con 
struct  a  new  arithmetic.  In  such  characteristic 
wisdom  we  have  the  intellectual  caliber  of  the 
man. 

This  brilliant  and  profound  address  came  only 
as  the  fruit  of  a  lifetime  of  thought  on  political 
philosophy.  President  Butcher's  treatise  on 
"Why  We  Should  Never  Change  Any  Form  of 
Government"  has  been  worth  more  to  thoughtful 
men  than  thousands  of  sermons  on  civic  right 
eousness.  No  one  who  has  ever  heard  President 
Butcher's  rotund  voice  discuss  in  a  public  address 
"those  ideas  and  practices  which  have  been  tried 
and  tested  by  a  thousand  years  of  experience"  will 
ever  allow  his  mind  to  dwell  again  on  the  pro- 
[101] 


gressivt  and  disintegrating  tendencies  of  the  day, 
nor  will  he  have  the  heart  again  to  challenge  on 
any  subject  the  "decent  respect  for  the  common 
opinions  of  mankind." 

President  Butcher's  social  philosophy  is  as 
sound  as  his  political.  The  flexibility  of  his 
mind  is  shown  in  the  fact  that,  although  an  immu- 
tabilist  in  politics,  he  is  a  staunch  Darwinian  in 
sociology.  Himself  triumphantly  fit,  he  never 
wearies  of  expressing  his  robust  contempt  for  the 
unfit  who  encumber  the  earth.  His  essay  on  "The 
Insurrection  of  the  Maladjusted"  is  already  a 
classic  in  American  literature.  The  trenchant  at 
tack  on  modern  social  movements  as  the  impu 
dent  revolt  of  the  unfit  against  those  who,  by  their 
personal  merits  and  industry,  have,  like  himself, 
achieved  success,  has  been  a  grateful  bulwark  to 
thousands  who  might  otherwise  have  been  swept 
sentimentally  from  their  moorings  by  those  false 
guides  who  erect  their  own  weakness  and  failure 
into  a  criticism  of  society. 

Dr.  Butcher's  literary  eminence  has  not  only 
won  him  a  chair  in  the  American  Academy  of 
All  the  Arts,  Sciences,  and  Philosophies,  but  has 
made  him  almost  as  well  known  abroad  as  at 

[102] 


home.  He  has  lectured  before  the  learned  socie 
ties  of  Lisbon  on  "The  American  at  Home,"  and 
he  has  a  wide  circle  of  acquaintances  in  every  cap 
ital  in  Europe.  Most  of  the  foreign  universities 
have  awarded  him  honorary  degrees.  In  spite  of 
his  stout  Americanism,  Dr.  Butcher  has  one  of  the 
most  cosmopolitan  of  minds.  His  essay  on  "The 
Cosmopolitan  Intellect"  has  been  translated  into 
every  civilized  language.  With  his  admired 
friend,  Owen  Griffith,  he  has  collaborated  in  the 
latter's  endeavor  to  beat  the  swords  of  industrial 
exploitation  into  the  ploughshares  of  universal 
peace.  He  has  served  in  numerous  capacities  on 
Griffith's  many  peace  boards  and  foundations,  and 
has  advised  him  widely  and  well  how  to  distribute 
his  millions  so  as  to  prevent  the  recurrence  of  war 
in  future  centuries. 

Let  it  not  be  thought  that,  in  recounting  Presi 
dent  Butcher's  public  life  and  services,  I  am  min 
imizing  his  distinction  as  a  university  administra 
tor.  As  executive  of  one  of  the  largest  universi 
ties  in  America,  he  has  raised  the  position  of  col 
lege  president  to  a  dignity  surpassed  by  scarcely 
any  office  except  President  of  the  United  States. 
The  splendid  $125,000  mansion  which  President 
['03] 


Butcher  had  the  trustees  of  Pluribus  build  for  him 
on  the  heights  overlooking  the  city,  where  he  en 
tertains  distinguished  foreign  guests  with  all  the 
pomp  worthy  of  his  high  office,  is  the  precise  meas 
ure  both  of  the  majesty  with  which  he  has  en 
dowed  the  hitherto  relatively  humble  position,  and 
the  appreciation  of  a  grateful  university.  The 
relations  between  President  Butcher  and  the  trus 
tees  of  Pluribus  have  always  been  of  the  most 
beautiful  nature.  The  warm  and  profound  intel 
lectual  sympathy  which  he  feels  for  the  methods 
and  practices  of  the  financial  and  corporate  world, 
and  the  extensive  personal  affiliations  he  has 
formed  with  its  leaders,  have  made  it  possible  to 
leave  in  his  hands  a  large  measure  of  absolute 
authority.  Huge  endowments  have  made  Pluri 
bus  under  President  Butcher's  rule  one  of  the 
wealthiest  of  our  higher  institutions  of  learning. 
With  a  rare  intuitive  response  to  the  spirit  of  the 
time,  the  President  has  labored  to  make  it  the  big 
gest  and  most  comprehensive  of  its  kind.  Already 
its  schools  are  numbered  by  the  dozens,  its  build 
ings  by  the  scores,  its  instructors  by  the  hundreds, 
its  students  by  the  thousands,  its  income  by  the 

[  104] 


millions,  and  its  possessions  by  the  tens  of  mil 
lions. 

None  who  have  seen  President  Butcher  in  the 
commencement  exercises  of  Pluribus  can  ever  for 
get  the  impressiveness  of  the  spectacle.  His  re 
semblance  to  Henry  VIII  is  more  marked  now  that 
he  has  donned  the  crimson  gown  and  flat  hat  of  the 
famous  English  university  which  gave  him  the  de 
gree  of  LL.D.  Seated  in  a  high-backed  chair — 
the  historic  chair  of  the  first  colonial  president  of 
Pluribus — surrounded  by  tier  upon  tier  of  his  ret 
inue  of  the  thousand  professors  of  the  university, 
President  Alexander  Mackintosh  Butcher  presents 
the  degrees,  and  in  his  emphatic  voice  warns  the 
five  thousand  graduates  before  him  against  every 
thing  new,  everything  untried,  everything  un* 
tested. 

Only  one  office  could  tempt  President  Butcher 
from  his  high  estate.  Yet  even  those  enthusiastic 
alumni  and  those  devoted  professors  who  long  to 
see  him  President  of  the  United  States  have  little 
hope  of  tempting  him  from  his  duties  to  his  alma 
mater.  Having  set  his  hand  to  the  plough,  he 
must  see  Pluribus  through  her  harvest  season,  and 

[105] 


may  God  prosper  the  work!  So,  beloved  of  all, 
alumni  and  instructors  alike,  the  idol  of  the  un 
dergraduates,  a  national  oracle  of  Prosperity  and 
Peace,  President  Butcher  passes  to  a  green  old  age, 
a  truly  Olympian  figure  of  the  time. 


[  106  ] 


THIS  OLDER  GENERATION 


I  READ  with  ever-increasing  wonder  the  guarded 
defenses  and  discreet  apologies  for  the  older  gen 
eration  which  keep  filtering  through  the  essays  of 
the  Atlantic.  I  can  even  seem  to  detect  a  grow 
ing  decision  of  tone,  a  definite  assurance  of  convic 
tion,  which  seems  to  imply  that  a  rally  has  been 
undertaken  against  the  accusations  which  the 
younger  generation,  in  its  self-assurance,  its  irrev 
erence  for  the  old  conventions  and  moralities,  its 
passion  for  the  novel  and  startling,  seemed  to  be 
bringing  against  them.  The  first  faint  twinges  of 
conscience  felt  by  the  older  generation  have  given 
place  to  renewed  homily.  There  is  an  evident 
anxiety  to  get  itself  put  on  record  as  perfectly  sat 
isfied  with  its  world,  and  desirous  that  its  sons  and 
daughters  should  learn  anew  of  those  peculiar 
beauties  in  which  it  has  lived.  Swept  off  its  feet 


by  the  call  to  social  service  and  social  reform,  it 
is  slowly  regaining  its  foundation,  and,  slightly 
flushed,  and  with  garments  somewhat  awry,  it  pro 
claims  again  its  belief  in  the  eternal  verities  of 
Protestant  religion  and  conventional  New  Eng 
land  morality. 

It  is  always  an  encouraging  sign  when  people 
are  rendered  self-conscious  and  are  forced  to  ex-. 
amine  the  basis  of  their  ideals.  The  demand  that 
they  explain  them  to  skeptics  always  makes  for 
clarity.  When  the  older  generation  is  put  on  the 
defensive,  it  must  first  discover  what  convictions  it 
has,  and  then  sharpen  them  to  their  finest  point  in 
order  to  present  them  convincingly.  There  are  al 
ways  too  many  unquestioned  things  in  the  world, 
and  for  a  person  or  class  to  have  to  scurry  about  to 
find  reasons  for  its  prejudices  is  about  as  healthy 
an  exercise  as  one  could  wish  for  either  of  them. 
To  be  sure,  the  reasons  are  rarely  any  more  than 
ex  post  facto  excuses, — supports  and  justifications 
for  the  prejudices  rather  than  the  causes  thereof. 
Reason  itself  is  very  seldom  more  than  that.  The 
important  point  is  that  one  should  feel  the  need  of 
a  reason.  This  always  indicates  that  something 
has  begun  to  slide,  that  the  world  is  no  longer  so 

[108] 


secure  as  it  was,  that  obvious  truths  no  longer  are 
obvious,  that  the  world  has  begun  to  bristle  with 
question  marks. 

One  of  the  basic  grievances  of  this  older  gener 
ation  against  the  younger  of  to-day,  with  its  social 
agitation,  its  religious  heresy,  its  presumptive  in 
dividuality,  its  economic  restlessness,  is  that  all 
this  makes  it  uncomfortable.  When  you  have 
found  growing  older  to  be  a  process  of  the  recon 
ciliation  of  the  spirit  to  life,  it  is  decidedly  dis 
concerting  to  have  some  youngster  come  along  and 
point  out  the  irreconcilable  things  in  the  universe. 
Just  as  you  have  made  a  tacit  agreement  to  call 
certain  things  non-existent,  it  is  highly  discom 
moding  to  have  somebody  shout  with  strident 
tones  that  they  are  very  real  and  significant. 
When,  after  much  struggling  and  compromise,  you 
have  got  your  world  clamped  down,  it  is  discour 
aging  to  have  a  gale  arise  which  threatens  to  blow 
over  all  your  structure.  Through  so  much  of  the 
current  writing  runs  this  quiet  note  of  disapproba 
tion.  These  agnostic  professors  who  unsettle  the 
faith  of  our  youth,  these  "intellectuals  who  stick  a 
finger  in  everybody's  pie  in  the  name  of  social  jus 
tice,"  these  sensation-mongers  who  unveil  great 


masses  of  political  and  social  corruption,  these  re 
morseless  scientists  who  would  reveal  so  many  of 
our  reticences — why  can't  they  let  us  alone1?  Can 
they  not  see  that  God's  in  his  heaven,  all's  right 
with  the  world? 

ii 

Now  I  know  this  older  generation  which  doth 
protest  so  much.  I  have  lived  with  it  for  the 
last  fifteen  years,  ever  since  I  began  to  wonder 
whether  all  was  for  the  best  in  the  best  of  all  pos 
sible  worlds.  I  was  educated  by  it,  grew  up  with 
it.  I  doubt  if  any  generation  ever  had  a  more 
docile  pupil  than  I.  What  they  taught  me,  I  find 
they  still  believe,  or  at  least  so  many  of  them  as 
have  not  gone  over  to  the  enemy,  or  been  captured 
by  the  militant  youth  of  to-day.  Or,  as  seems 
rather  likely,  they  no  longer  precisely  believe, 
but  they  want  their  own  arguments  to  con 
vince  themselves.  It  is  probable  that  when  we 
really  believe  a  thing  with  all  our  hearts,  we  do 
not  attempt  to  justify  it.  Justification  comes 
only  when  we  are  beginning  to  doubt  it. 

By  this  older  generation  I  mean,  of  course,  the 
mothers  and  fathers  and  uncles  and  aunts  of  the 

[110] 


youth  of  both  sexes  between  twenty  and  thirty 
who  are  beginning  their  professional  or  business 
life.  And  I  refer  of  course  to  the  comfortable  or 
fairly  comfortable  American  middle  class.  Now 
this  older  generation  has  had  a  religion,  a  meta 
physics,  an  ethics,  and  a  political  and  social  phil 
osophy,  which  have  reigned  practically  undis 
puted  until  the  appearance  of  the  present  genera 
tion.  It  has  at  least  never  felt  called  upon  to  jus-  ^ 
tify  itself.  It  has  never  been  directly  challenged, 
as  it  is  to-day.  In  order  to  localize  this  genera 
tion  still  further,  we  must  see  it  in  its  typical  set 
ting  of  the  small  town  or  city,  clustered  about  the 
institutions  of  church  and  family.  If  we  have 
any  society  which  can  be  called  "American,"  it  is 
this  society.  Its  psychology  is  American  psychol 
ogy;  its  soul  is  America's  soul. 

This  older  generation,  which  I  have  known  so 
well  for  fifteen  years,  has  a  religion  which  is  on 
the  whole  as  pleasant  and  easy  as  could  be  de 
vised.  Though  its  members  are  the  descendants 
of  the  stern  and  rugged  old  Puritans,  who  wrestled 
with  the  devil  and  stripped  their  world  of  all  that 
might  seduce  them  from  the  awful  service  of  God, 
they  have  succeeded  in  straining  away  by  a  long 

[in] 


process  all  the  repellent  attitudes  in  the  old  phil 
osophy  of  life.  It  is  unfair  to  say  that  the  older 
generation  believe  in  dogmas  and  creeds.  It 
would  be  more  accurate  to  say  that  it  does  not  dis 
believe.  It  retains  them  as  a  sort  of  guaranty  of 
the  stability  of  the  faith,  but  leaves  them  rather 
severely  alone.  It  does  not  even  make  more  than 
feeble  efforts  to  reinterpret  them  in  the  light  of 
modern  knowledge.  They  are  useless,  but  neces 
sary. 

The  foundation  of  this  religion  may  be  relig 
ious,  but  the  superstructure  is  almost  entirely  eth 
ical.  Most  sermons  of  to-day  are  little  more  than 
pious  exhortations  to  good  conduct.  By  good  con 
duct  is  meant  that  sort  of  action  which  will  least 
disturb  the  normal  routine  of  modern  middle-class 
life :  common  honesty  in  business  life,  faithful 
ness  to  duty,  ambition  in  business  and  profession, 
filial  obligation,  the  use  of  talents,  and  always  and 
everywhere  simple  human  kindness  and  love. 
The  old  Puritan  ethics,  which  saw  in  the  least  is 
sue  of  conduct  a  struggle  between  God  and  the 
devil,  has  become  a  mere  code  for  facilitating  the 
daily  friction  of  conventional  life. 

Now  one  would  indeed  be  churlish  to  find  fault 

[112] 


with  this  devout  belief  in  simple  goodness,  which 
characterizes  the  older  generation.  It  is  only 
when  these  humble  virtues  are  raised  up  into  an 
all-inclusive  program  for  social  reform  and  into  a 
philosophy  of  life,  that  one  begins  to  question,  and 
to  feel  afar  the  deep  hostility  of  the  older  genera 
tion  to  the  new  faith. 

Simple  kindness,  common  honesty,  filial  obedi 
ence,  it  is  evidently  still  felt,  will  solve  all  the  dif 
ficulties  of  personal  and  social  life.  The  most 
popular  novels  of  the  day  are  those  in  which  the 
characters  do  the  most  good  to  each  other.  The 
enormous  success  with  the  older  generation  of  The 
Inside  of  the  Cup,  Queed,  and  V.  V.'s  Eyes,  is 
based  primarily  on  the  fact  that  these  books  repre 
sent  a  sublimated  form  of  the  good  old  American 
melodramatic  moral  sense.  And  now  comes  along 
Mr.  Gerald  Stanley  Lee  with  his  Crowds, — what 
a  funny,  individualized,  personal-responsibility 
crowd  he  gives  us,  to  be  sure, — and  his  panacea  for 
modern  social  ills  by  the  old  solution  of  applied 
personal  virtue.  Never  a  word  about  removing 
the  barriers  of  caste  and  race  and  economic  in 
equality,  but  only  an  urging  to  step  over  them. 
Never  a  trumpet-call  to  level  the  ramparts  of  priv- 


ilege,  or  build  up  the  heights  of  opportunity,  but 
only  an  appeal  to  extend  the  charitable  hand  from 
the  ramparts  of  heaven,  or  offer  the  kindly  patron 
age  to  the  less  fortunate,  or — most  dazzling  of  all 
— throw  away,  in  a  frenzy  of  abandonment,  life 
and  fortune.  Not  to  construct  a  business  organ 
ization  where  dishonesty  would  be  meaningless, 
but  to  be  utopianly  honest  against  the  business 
world.  In  other  words,  the  older  generation  be 
lieves  in  getting  all  the  luxury  of  the  virtue  of 
goodness,  while  conserving  all  the  advantages  of 
being  in  a  vicious  society. 

If  there  is  any  one  characteristic  which  distin 
guishes  the  older  generation,  it  is  this  belief  that 
social  ills  may  be  cured  by  personal  virtue.  Its 
highest  moral  ideals  are  sacrifice  and  service.  But 
the  older  generation  can  never  see  how  intensely 
selfish  these  ideals  are,  in  the  most  complete  sense 
of  the  word  selfish.  What  they  mean  always  is, 
"I  sacrifice  myself  for  you,"  "I  serve  you,"  not, 
"We  cooperate  in  working  ceaselessly  toward  an 
ideal  where  all  may  be  free  and  none  may  be 
served  or  serve."  These  ideals  of  sacrifice  and 
service  are  utterly  selfish,  because  they  take  ac 
count  only  of  the  satisfaction  and  moral  consolida- 


tion  of  the  doer.  They  enhance  his  moral  value; 
but  what  of  the  person  who  is  served  or  sacrificed 
for?  What  of  the  person  who  is  done  good  to? 
If  the  feelings  of  sacrifice  and  service  were  in  any 
sense  altruistic,  the  moral  enhancement  of  the  re 
ceiver  would  be  the  object  sought.  But  can  it  not 
be  said  that  for  every  individual  virtuous  merit  se 
cured  by  an  act  of  sacrifice  or  service  on  the  part 
of  the  doer,  there  is  a  corresponding  depression 
on  the  part  of  the  receiver?  Do  we  not  univers 
ally  recognize  this  by  calling  a  person  who  is  not 
conscious  of  this  depression,  a  parasite,  and  the 
person  who  is  no  longer  capable  of  depression,  a 
pauper?  It  is  exactly  those  free  gifts,  such  as 
schools,  libraries,  and  so  forth,  which  are  imper 
sonal  or  social,  that  we -can  accept  gratefully  and 
gladly;  and  it  is  exactly  because  the  ministrations 
of  a  Charity  Organization  Society  are  impersonal 
and  businesslike  that  they  can  be  received  will 
ingly  and  without  moral  depression  by  the  poor. 

The  ideal  of  duty  is  equally  open  to  attack. 
The  great  complaint  of  the  younger  against  the 
older  generation  has  to  do  with  the  rigidity  of  the 
social  relationships  into  which  the  younger  find 
themselves  born.  The  world  seems  to  be  full  of 


what  may  be  called  canalized  emotions.  One  is 
"supposed"  to  love  one's  aunt  or  one's  grandfather 
in  a  certain  definite  way,  at  the  risk  of  being  "un 
natural."  One  gets  almost  a  sense  of  the  quanti 
tative  measurement  of  emotion.  Perhaps  the 
greatest  tragedy  of  family  life  is  the  useless  energy 
that  is  expended  by  the  dutiful  in  keeping  these 
artificial  channels  open,  and  the  correct  amount 
of  current  running.  It  is  exactly  this  that  pro 
duces  most  infallibly  the  rebellion  of  the  younger 
generation.  To  hear  that  one  ought  to  love  this 
or  that  person;  or  to  hear  loyalty  spoken  of,  as 
the  older  generation  so  often  speaks  of  it,  as  if  it 
consisted  in  an  allegiance  to  something  which  one 
no  longer  believes  in, — this  is  what  soonest  liber 
ates  those  forces  of  madness  and  revolt  which  be 
wilder  spiritual  teachers  and  guides.  It  is  those 
dry  channels  of  duty  and  obligation  through  which 
no  living  waters  of  emotion  flow  that  it  is  the 
ideal  of  the  younger  generation  to  break  up. 
They  will  have  no  network  of  emotional  canals 
which  are  not  brimming,  no  duties  which  are  not 
equally  loves. 

But  when  they  are  loves,  you  have  duty  no 
longer  meaning  very  much.     Duty,  like  sacrifice 

[116] 


and  service,  always  implies  a  personal  relation  of 
individuals.  You  are  always  doing  your  duty  to 
somebody  or  something.  Always  the  taint  of  in 
equality  comes  in.  You  are  morally  superior  to 
the  person  who  has  duty  done  to  him.  If  that 
duty  is  not  filled  with  good-will  and  desire,  it  is 
morally  hateful,  or  at  very  best,  a  necessary  evil, 
— one  of  those  compromises  with  the  world  which 
must  be  made  in  order  to  get  through  it  at  all. 
But  duty  without  good-will  is  a  compromise  with 
our  present  state  of  inequality,  and  to  raise  duty 
to  the  level  of  a  virtue  is  to  consecrate  that  state  of 
inequality  forevermore. 

in 

It  is  the  same  thing  with  service.  The  older 
generation  has  attempted  an  insidious  compromise 
with  the  new  social  democracy  by  combining  the 
words  "social"  and  "service."  Under  cover  of 
the  ideal  of  service  it  tries  to  appropriate  to  itself 
the  glory  of  social  work,  and  succeeds  in  almost 
convincing  itself  and  the  world  that  its  Christian 
ity  has  always  held  the  same  ideal.  The  faithful 
are  urged  to  extend  their  activities.  The  assump 
tion  is  that,  by  doing  good  to  more  individuals, 

[117] 


you  are  thereby  becoming  social.  But  to  speak  of 
"social  democracy,"  which  of  course  means  a 
freely  cooperating,  freely  reciprocating  society  of 
equals,  and  "service,"  together,  is  a  contradiction 
of  terms.  For,  when  you  serve  people  or  do  good 
to  them,  you  thereby  render  yourself  unequal  with 
them.  You  insult  the  democratic  ideal.  If  the 
service  is  compulsory,  it  is  menial  and  you  are  in 
ferior.  If  voluntary,  you  are  superior.  The  dif 
ference,  however,  is  only  academic.  The  entire 
Christian  scheme  is  a  clever  but  unsuccessful  at 
tempt  to  cure  the  evils  of  inequality  by  transpos 
ing  the  values.  The  slave  serves  gladly  instead  of 
servilely.  That  is,  he  turns  his  master  into  a 
slave.  That  is  why  good  Christian  people  can 
never  get  over  the  idea  that  Socialism  means  sim 
ply  the  triumph  of  one  class  over  another.  To 
day  the  proletarian  is  down,  the  capitalist  up. 
To-morrow  the  proletarian  will  be  up  and  the 
capitalist  down.  To  pull  down  the  mighty  from 
their  seats  and  exalt  them  of  low  degree  is  the 
highest  pitch  to  which  Christian  ethics  ever  at 
tained.  The  failure  of  the  older  generation  to 
recognize  a  higher  ethic,  the  ethic  of  democracy, 
is  the  cause  of  all  the  trouble. 


The  notorious  Victorian  era,  which  in  its  secret 
heart  this  older  generation  still  admires  so  much, 
accentuated  all  the  latent  individualism  of  Chris 
tian  ethics,  and  produced  a  code  which,  without 
the  rebellion  of  the  younger  generation,  would 
have  spiritually  guaranteed  forever  all  moral  caste 
divisions  and  inequalities  of  modern  society.  The 
Protestant  Church,  in  which  this  exaggerated  ethic 
was  enshrined,  is  now  paying  heavily  the  price  of 
this  debauch  of  ethical  power.  Its  rapidly  declin 
ing  numbers  show  that  human  nature  has  an  in 
vincible  objection  to  being  individually  saved. 
The  Catholic  Church,  which  saves  men  as  members 
of  the  Beloved  Community,  and  not  as  individu 
als,  flourishes.  When  one  is  saved  by  Catholi 
cism,  one  becomes  a  democrat,  and  not  a  spiritual 
snob  and  aristocrat,  as  one  does  through  Calvin 
ism.  The  older  generation  can  never  understand 
that  superb  loyalty  which  is  loyalty  te  a  com 
munity, — a  loyalty  which,  paradoxical  as  it  may 
seem,  nourishes  the  true  social  personality  in  pro 
portion  as  the  individual  sense  is  lessened.  The 
Protestant  Church  in  its  tenacious  devotion  to  the 
personal  ideal  of  a  Divine  Master — the  highest 
and  most  popular  Christian  ideal  of  to-day — 


shows  how  very  far  it  still  is  away  from  the  ideals 
and  ethics  of  a  social  democracy,  a  life  lived  in  the 
Beloved  Community. 

The  sense  of  self-respect  is  the  very  keystone  of 
the  personality  in  whose  defence  all  this  individu 
alistic  philosophy  has  been  carefully  built  up. 
The  Christian  virtues  date  from  ages  when  there 
was  a  vastly  greater  number  of  morally  depressed 
people  than  there  is  now.  The  tenacious  survival 
of  these  virtues  can  be  due  only  to  the  fact  that 
they  were  valuable  to  the  moral  prestige  of  some 
class.  Our  older  generation,  with  its  emphasis  on 
duty,  sacrifice,  and  service,  shows  us  very  clearly 
what  those  interests  were.  I  deliberately  accuse 
the  older  generation  of  conserving  and  greatly 
strengthening  these  ideals,  as  a  defensive  measure. 
Morals  are  always  the  product  of  a  situation ;  they 
reflect  a  certain  organization  of  human  relations 
which  some  class  or  group  wishes  to  preserve.  A 
moral  code  or  set  of  ideals  is  always  the  invisible 
spiritual  sign  of  a  visible  social  grace.  In  an  ef 
fort  to  retain  the  status  quo  of  that  world  of  in 
equalities  and  conventions  in  which  they  most  com 
fortably  and  prosperously  live,  the  older  genera 
tion  has  stamped,  through  all  its  agencies  of  fam- 

[120] 


ily,  church  and  school,  upon  the  younger  genera 
tion,  just  those  seductive  ideals  which  would  pre 
serve  its  position.  These  old  virtues  upon  which, 
however,  the  younger  generation  is  already  making 
guerilla  warfare  are  simply  the  moral  support 
with  which  the  older  generation  buttresses  its  so 
cial  situation. 

The  natural  barriers  and  prejudices  by  which 
our  elders  are  cut  off  from  a  freely  flowing  democ 
racy  are  thus  given  a  spiritual  justification,  and 
there  is  added  for  our  elders  the  almost  sensual 
luxury  of  leaping,  by  free  grace,  the  barriers  and 
giving  themselves  away.  But  the  price  has  to  be 
paid.  Just  as  profits,  in  the  socialist  philosophy, 
are  taken  to  be  an  abstraction  from  wages,  through 
the  economic  power  which  one  class  has  over  an 
other,  so  the  virtues  of  the  older  generation  may 
be  said  to  be  an  abstraction  from  the  virtue  of 
other  classes  less  favorably  situated  from  a  moral 
or  personal  point  of  view.  Their  swollen  self-re 
spect  is  at  the  expense  of  others. 

How  well  we  know  the  type  of  man  in  the  older 
generation  who  has  been  doing  good  all  his  life! 
How  his  personality  has  thriven  on  it !  How  he 
has  ceaselessly  been  storing  away  moral  fat  in 

[121] 


every  cranny  of  his  soul !  His  goodness  has  been 
meat  to  him.  The  need  and  depression  of  other 
people  has  been,  all  unconsciously  to  him,  the  air 
which  he  has  breathed.  Without  their  compen 
sating  misfortune  or  sin,  his  goodness  would 
have  wilted  and  died.  If  good  people  would 
earnestly  set  to  work  to  make  the  world  uniformly 
healthy,  courageous,  beautiful,  and  prosperous, 
the  field  of  their  vocation  would  be  constantly  lim 
ited,  and  finally  destroyed.  That  they  so  stoutly 
resist  all  philosophies  and  movements  which  have 
these  ends  primarily  in  view  is  convincing  evi 
dence  of  the  fierce  and  jealous  egoism  which  ani 
mates  their  so  plausibly  altruistic  spirit.  One 
suspects  that  the  older  generation  does  not  want  its 
vocation  destroyed.  It  takes  an  heroic  type  of 
goodness  to  undermine  all  the  foundations  on 
which  our  virtue  rests. 

If  then  I  object  to  the  ethical  philosophy  of  the 
older  generation  on  the  ground  that  it  is  too  in 
dividualistic,  and,  under  the  pretense  of  altruism, 
too  egoistic,  I  object  to  its  general  intellectuality 
as  not  individual  enough.  Intellectually  the  older 
generation  seems  to  me  to  lead  far  too  vegetative 
a  life.  It  may  be  that  this  life  has  been  lived  on 
[122] 


the  heights,  that  these  souls  have  passed  through 
fires  and  glories,  but  there  is  generally  too  little  ob 
jective  evidence  of  this  subjective  fact.  If  the  in 
tuition  which  accompanies  experience  has  verified 
all  the  data  regarding  God,  the  soul,  the  family, 
and  so  forth, — to  quote  one  of  the  staunchest  de 
fenders  of  the  generation, — this  verification  seems 
to  have  been  obtained  rather  that  the  issues  might 
be  promptly  disposed  of  and  forgotten.  Cer 
tainly  the  older  generation  is  rarely  interested  in 
the  profounder  issues  of  life.  It  never  speaks  of 
death, — the  suggestion  makes  it  uncomfortable. 
It  shies  in  panic  at  hints  of  sex-issues.  It  seems 
resolute  to  keep  life  on  as  objective  a  plane  as 
possible.  It  is  no  longer  curious  about  the  mo 
tives  and  feelings  of  people.  It  seems  singularly 
to  lack  the  psychological  sense.  If  it  gossips,  it 
recounts  actions,  effects;  it  rarely  seeks  to  inter 
pret.  It  tends  more  and  more  to  treat  human  be 
ings  as  moving  masses  of  matter  instead  of  as  per 
sonalities  filled  with  potent  influence,  or  as  ab 
sorbingly  interesting  social  types,  as  I  am  sure  the 
younger  generation  does. 

The  older  generation  seems  no  longer  to  gen 
eralize,  although  it  gives  every  evidence  of  having 


once  prodigiously  generalized,  for  its  world  is  all 
hardened  and  definite.  There  are  the  good  and 
the  criminal,  and  the  poor,  the  people  who  can  be 
called  nice,  and  the  ordinary  people.  The  world 
is  already  plotted  out.  Now  I  am  sure  that  the 
generalizations  of  the  truly  philosophical  mind 
are  very  fluid  and  ephemeral.  They  are  no  sooner 
made  than  the  mind  sees  their  insufficiency  and 
has  to  break  them  up.  A  new  cutting  is  made, 
only  in  turn  to  be  shaken  and  rearranged.  This 
keeps  the  philosopher  thinking  all  the  time,  and  it 
makes  his  world  a  very  uncertain  place.  But  he 
at  least  runs  no  risk  of  hardening,  and  he  has  his 
eyes  open  to  most  experience. 

I  am  often  impressed  with  the  fact  that  the 
older  generation  has  grown  weary  of  thinking. 
It  has  simply  put  up  the  bars  in  its  intellectual 
shop-windows  and  gone  off  home  to  rest.  It  may 
well  be  that  this  is  because  it  has  felt  so  much 
sorrow  that  it  does  not  want  to  talk  about  sorrow, 
or  so  much  love  that  to  interpret  love  tires  it,  or 
repulsed  so  many  rude  blows  of  destiny  that  it  has 
no  interest  in  speaking  of  destiny.  Its  flame  may 
be  low  for  the  very  reason  that  it  has  burned  so 

[124] 


intensely.  But  how  many  of  the  younger  genera 
tion  would  eagerly  long  for  such  interpretations  if 
the  older  would  only  reveal  them !  And  how  lit 
tle  plausible  is  that  experience  when  it  is  occasion 
ally  interpreted!  No,  enthusiasm,  passion  for 
ideas,  sensuality,  religious  fervor, — all  the  heated 
weapons  with  which  the  younger  generation  at 
tacks  the  world,  seem  only  to  make  the  older  gen 
eration  uneasy.  The  spirit,  in  becoming  recon 
ciled  to  life,  has  lost  life  itself. 

As  I  see  the  older  generation  going  through  its 
daily  round  of  business,  church,  and  family  life,  I 
cannot  help  feeling  that  its  influence  is  profoundly 
pernicious.  It  has  signally  failed  to  broaden  its 
institutions  for  the  larger  horizon  of  the  time. 
The  church  remains  a  private  club  of  comfortable 
middle-class  families,  while  outside  there  grows  up 
without  spiritual  inspiration  a  heterogeneous  mass 
of  people  without  ties,  roots,  or  principles.  The 
town  changes  from  a  village  to  an  industrial  cen 
ter,  and  church  and  school  go  through  their  time- 
honored  and  listless  motions.  The,,  world  widens, 
society  expands,  formidable  crises  appear,  but  the 
older  generation  does  not  broaden,  or  if  it  does,  the 


broadening  is  in  no  adequate  proportion  to  our 
needs.  The  older  generation  still  uses  the  old 
ideas  for  the  new  problem.  Whatever  new  wine 
it  finds  must  be  poured  into  the  old  bottles. 

Where  are  the  leaders  among  the  older  genera 
tion  in  America  who,  with  luminous  faith  and  in 
telligence,  are  rallying  around  them  the  disinte 
grated  numbers  of  idealistic  youth,  as  Bergson  and 
Barres  and  Jaures  have  done  in  France4?  A  few 
years  ago  there  seemed  to  be  a  promise  of  a  for 
ward  movement  toward  Democracy,  led  by  em 
battled  veterans  in  a  war  against  privilege.  But 
how  soon  the  older  generation  became  wearied  in 
the  march!  What  is  left  now  of  that  shining 
army  and  its  leader?  Must  the  younger  genera 
tion  eternally  wait  for  the  sign? 

The  answer  is,  of  course,  that  it  will  not  wait. 
It  must  shoulder  the  gigantic  task  of  putting  into 
practice  its  ideals  and  revolutionary  points  of  view 
as  wholeheartedly  and  successfully  as  our  great 
grandfathers  applied  theirs  and  tightened  the  phil 
osophy  of  life  which  imprisons  the  older  genera 
tion.  The  shuddering  fear  that  we  in  turn  may 
become  weary,  complacent,  evasive,  should  be  the 
best  preventive  of  that  stagnation.  We  shall 

[126] 


never  have  done  looking  for  the  miracle,  that  it 
shall  be  given  us  to  lighten,  cheer,  and  purify  our 
"younger  generation,"  even  as  our  older  has  de 
pressed  and  disintegrated  us. 


[  127  ] 


A  MIRROR  OF  THE  MIDDLE  WEST 

No  Easterner,  born  forlornly  within  the  sphere 
of  New  York,  Boston,  or  Philadelphia,  can  pass 
very  far  beyond  the  Alleghanies  without  feeling 
that  American  civilization  is  here  found  in  the  full 
tide  of  believing  in  itself.  The  flat  countryside 
looks  more  ordered,  more  farmlike;  the  Main 
Streets  that  flash  by  the  car-windows  somehow 
look  more  robust  and  communal.  There  may  be 
no  less  litter  and  scrubbiness;  the  clustered  houses 
of  the  towns  may  look  even  more  flimsy,  undistin 
guished,  well-worn;  but  it  is  a  litter  of  aspiring  or 
der,  a  chaos  which  the  people  are  insensitive  to  be 
cause  they  are  living  in  the  light  of  a  hopeful 
future.  The  East  has  pretty  much  abandoned  it 
self  to  the  tides  of  immigration  and  industrial 
change  which  have  overwhelmed  it :  no  one  really 
believes  that  anything  startling  will  be  done  to 
bring  about  a  new  heaven  ,and  a  new  earth.  But 
[128] 


the  intelligence  of  the  West  seems  to  live  in  apoca 
lyptic  sociological — not  socialistic,  however — 
dreams.  Architects  and  business  men  combine 
half-heartedly  to  "save  New  York"  from  the  hor 
rors  of  the  Jewish  clothing-trade  invasion,  but 
Chicago  draws  great  maps  and  sketches  of  a  city- 
planning  that  shall  make  it  not  only  habitable  but 
radiant  and  palatial. 

Hope  has  not  vanished  from  the  East,  but  it  has 
long  since  ceased  to  be  our  daily  diet.  Europe  has 
infected  us  perhaps  with  some  of  its  world-weari 
ness.  The  East  produces  more  skeptics  and  spir 
itual  malcontents  than  the  West.  For  the  Mid 
dle  West  seems  to  have  accomplished  most  of  the 
things,  industrial  and  political,  that  the  East  has 
been  trying  to  do,  and  it  has  done  them  better. 
The  Middle  West  is  the  apotheosis  of  American 
civilization,  and  like  all  successes  it  is  in  no  mood 
to  be  very  critical  of  itself  or  very  examinatory  as 
to  the  anatomy  and  physiology  of  its  social  being. 
No  Easterner  with  Meredith  Nicholson's  human 
and  literary  experience  would  write  so  complac 
ently  and  cheerfully  about  his  part  of  the  country 
as  Mr.  Nicholson  writes  about  "The  Valley  of 
Democracy."  His  self-confidence  is  the  very 


voice  of  the  Middle  West,  telling  us  what  it  thinks 
of  itself.  This,  we  say  as  we  read,  must  be  the 
inner  candor  which  goes  with  the  West  that  we 
see  with  our  eyes.  So  we  like  Mr.  Nicholson's 
articles  not  so  much  for  the  information  they  give 
us  as  for  the  attitudes  they  let  slip,  the  unconscious 
revelations  of  what  the  people  he  is  talking  for 
think  important. 

It  is  not  a  book  of  justification,  although  he 
would  rather  anxiously  have  us  take  not  too  seri 
ously  the  political  vagaries  like  Bryanism  and  Pro- 
gressivism.  And  he  wishes  us  to  miss  none  of  the 
symphony  orchestras  and  art  institutes  that  evi 
dently  now  begin  to  grow  like  grasshoppers  on  the 
prairies.  He  treats  himself  rather  as  an  expositor, 
and  he  is  explicitly  informational,  almost  as  if  for 
a  foreign  country.  He  sometimes  has  an  amusing 
air  of  having  hastily  read  up  and  investigated 
Western  wonders  and  significances  that  have  been 
not  only  common  material  in  the  Eastern  maga 
zines,  but  matter  of  despairing  admiration  on  the 
part  of  those  of  us  who  are  general  improvers  of 
mankind.  He  is  naive  about  the  greatness  of 
Chicago,  the  vastness  of  agricultural  production, 
the  ravages  of  culture  among  the  middle  classes. 
[  130] 


He  is  almost  the  professional  Westerner  showing 
off  his  prize  human  stock. 

Mr.  Nicholson  does  well  to  begin  with  the 
folksiness  of  the  West.  No  one  who  has  experi 
enced  that  fine  open  friendliness  of  the  prosperous 
Middle  Westerner,  that  pleasant  awareness  of  the 
alert  and  beneficent  world  we  live  in,  can  deny 
that  the  Middle  West  is  quite  justified  in  think 
ing  of  itself  as  the  real  heart  of  the  nation.  That 
belief  in  the  ultimate  good  sense,  breadth  of 
vision,  and  devotion  to  the  common  good,  of  the 
"folks  back  home,"  is  in  itself  a  guaranty  of  social 
stability  and  of  a  prosperity  which  implies  that 
things  will  never  be  any  different  except  as  they 
slowly  improve.  Who  can  say  that  we  have  no 
Gemuthlichkeit  in  America,  when  he  runs  up 
against  this  warm  social  mixability  which  goes  so 
far  to  compensate  for  the  lack  of  intellectual 
nuances  and  spontaneous  artistic  sensibilities? 

Of  course  the  Middle  West  has  to  pay  for  its 
social  responsiveness  in  a  failure  to  create,  at  least 
in  this  day  and  generation,  very  vigorous  and  di 
verse  spiritual  types.  An  excessive  amiability,  a 
genius  for  adaptability  will,  in  the  end,  put  a 
premium  on  conformity.  The  Westerner  sin- 


cerely  believes  that  he  is  more  averse  to  conven 
tionality  than  the  Easterner,  but  the  latter  does 
not  find  him  so.  The  heretic  seems  to  have  a 
much  harder  time  of  it  in  the  West.  Classes  and 
attitudes  that  have  offended  against  the  "folks'  " 
codes  may  be  actually  outlawed.  When  there 
are  acute  differences  of  opinion,  as  in  the  war,  so 
ciety  splits  into  bitter  and  irreconcilable  camps, 
whereas  in  the  East  the  undesirables  have  been  al 
lowed  to  shade  off  towards  limbo  in  gradual  de 
grees.  When  hatred  and  malice,  too  long  starved 
by  too  much  "niceness,"  do  break  out  from  the 
natural  man,  they  may  produce  those  waves  of  per 
secution  and  vindictiveness  which,  coming  from  a 
so  recently  pacifist  West,  astonished  an  East  that 
was  no  less  densely  saturated  with  aliens  but  was 
more  conversant  with  the  feeling  that  it  takes  all 
kinds  of  people  to  make  a  world.  Folksiness  evi 
dently  has  its  dark  underlining  in  a  tendency  to  be 
stampeded  by  herd-emotion.  "Social  conscience" 
may  become  the  duty  to  follow  what  the  mob  de 
mands,  and  democracy  may  come  to  mean  that  the 
individual  feels  himself  somehow  expressed — his 
private  tastes  and  intelligence — in  whatever  the 
crowd  chooses  to  do. 


I  have  followed  Mr.  Nicholson  in  his  speaking 
of  the  Middle  West  as  if  he  thought  of  the  region 
as  a  unit.  He  does  speak  as  if  he  did,  but  he  does 
not  really  mean  it.  Much  as  he  would  like  to  be 
lieve  in  the  substantial  equality  of  the  people  in 
the  Valley  of  Democracy,  he  cannot  help  letting 
us  see  that  it  is  but  one  class  that  he  has  in  mind — 
his  own,  the  prosperous  people  of  the  towns.  He 
protests  against  their  being  scornfully  waved  aside 
as  bourgeoisie.  "They  constitute  the  most  inter 
esting  and  admirable  of  our  social  strata."  And 
he  is  quite  right.  Certainly  this  stratum  is  by  far 
the  most  admirable  of  all  the  middle  classes  of  the 
world.  It  is  true  that  "nowhere  else  have  com 
fort,  opportunity,  and  aspiration  produced  the 
same  combination."  He  marvels  at  the  numbers 
of  homes  in  the  cities  that  cannot  imaginably  be 
supported  on  less  than  five  thousand  a  year.  And 
it  is  these  homes,  and  their  slightly  more  impov 
erished  neighbors,  who  are  for  him  the  "folks," 
the  incarnate  Middle  West.  The  proletarian 
does  not  exist  for  him.  The  working-classes  are 
merely  so  much  cement,  filling  in  the  bricks  of  the 
temple — or,  better,  folks  in  embryo,  potential 
owners  of  bungalows  on  pleasant  suburban  streets. 

[133] 


Mr.  Nicholson's  enthusiasm  is  for  the  college-girl 
wife,  who  raises  babies,  attends  women's  clubs, 
and  is  not  afraid  to  dispense  with  the  unattainable 
servant.  It  is  for  the  good-natured  and  public- 
spirited  business  man,  who  goes  into  politics  be 
cause  politics  in  the  Middle  West  has  always  been 
concerned  with  the  prosperity  of  the  business  com 
munity.  But  about  the  economic  foundation  of 
this  class  Mr.  Nicholson  sounds  as  innocent  as  a 
babe. 

Take  his  attitude  towards  the  farmer.  You 
gather  from  these  pages  that  in  the  Middle  West 
the  farmer  is  a  somewhat  unfortunate  anomaly,  a 
shadow  on  the  bright  scene.  Farming  is  scarcely 
even  a  respectable  profession:  "the  great-grand 
children  of  the  Middle  Western  pioneers  are  not 
easily  persuaded  that  farming  is  an  honorable  call 
ing"  !  He  hints  darkly  at  a  decay  in  fiber.  Only 
one  chapter  out  of  six  is  given  to  the  farmer,  and 
that  is  largely  occupied  with  the  exertions  of  state 
agencies,  universities,  to  lift  him  out  of  his  ignor 
ance  and  selfishness.  The  average  farmer  has  few 
of  the  admirable  qualities  of  the  Valley  of  De 
mocracy.  He  is  not  "folksy";  he  is  suspicious, 
conservative,  somewhat  embittered,  little  given  to 

[134] 


cooperation;  he  even  needed  prodding  with  his 
Liberty  bonds.  In  Mr.  Nicholson's  pages  the 
farmer  becomes  a  huge  problem  which  lies  on  the 
brain  and  conscience  of  a  Middle  West  that  can 
only  act  towards  him  in  its  best  moments  like  a 
sort  of  benevolent  Charity  Organization  Society. 
"To  the  average  urban  citizen,"  says  Mr.  Nichol 
son,  "farming  is  something  remote  and  uninterest 
ing,  carried  on  by  men  he  never  meets  in  regions 
that  he  only  observes  hastily  from  a  speeding  auto 
mobile  or  the  window  of  a  limited  train." 

It  would  take  whole  volumes  to  develop  the  im 
plications  of  that  sentence.  Remember  that  that 
urban  citizen  is  Mr.  Nicholson's  Middle  West, 
and  that  the  farmer  comprises  the  huge  bulk  of  the 
population.  Is  this  not  interesting,  the  attitude 
of  the  prosperous  minority  of  an  urban  minority 
— a  small  but  significant  class  which  has  in  its 
hands  all  the  non-productive  business  and  political 
power — towards  the  great  productive  mass  of  the 
people?  Could  class  division  be  revealed  in 
plainer  terms?  This  Middle  West  of  Mr.  Nich 
olson's  class  sees  itself  as  not  only  innocent  of  ex 
ploitation,  but  full  of  all  the  personal  and  social 
virtues  besides.  But  does  the  farmer  see  this  class 

[135] 


in  this  light?  He  does  not.  And  Mr.  Veblen 
has  given  us  in  one  of  his  books  an  analysis  of  this 
society  which  may  explain  why :  "The  American 
country  town  and  small  city,"  he  says,  "is  a  busi 
ness  community,  that  is  to  say  it  lives  for  and  by 
business  traffic,  primarily  of  a  merchandising  sort. 
.  .  .  Municipal  politics  is  conducted  as  in  some 
sort  a  public  or  overt  extension  of  that  private  or 
covert  organization  of  local  interests  that  watches 
over  the  joint  pecuniary  benefit  of  the  local  busi 
nessmen.  It  is  a  means  ...  of  safe-guarding 
the  local  business  community  against  interlopers 
and  against  any  evasive  tactics  on  the  part  of  the 
country  population  that  serves  as  a  host.  .  .  . 
The  country  town  is  a  product  and  exponent  of 
the  American  land  system.  In  its  beginning  it  is 
located  and  'developed'  as  an  enterprise  of  specu 
lation  in  land  values;  that  is  to  say,  it  is  a  business 
like  endeavor  to  get  something  for  nothing  by  en 
grossing  as  much  as  may  be  of  the  increment  of 
land  values  due  to  the  increase  of  population  and 
the  settlement  and  cultivation  of  the  adjacent 
agricultural  area.  It  never  (hitherto)  loses  this 
character  of  real-estate  speculation.  This  af 
fords  a  common  bond  and  a  common  ground  of 

[  136.1 


pecuniary  interest,  which  commonly  masquerades 
under  the  name  of  public  patriotism,  public  spirit, 
civic  pride,  and  the  like." 

In  other  words,  Town,  in  the  traditional  Ameri 
can  scheme  of  things,  is  shown  charging  Country 
all  the  traffic  will  bear.  It  would  be  hard  to  find 
a  member  of  Mr.  Nicholson's  Middle  West — that 
minority  urban  class — who  was  not  owing  his  pros 
perity  to  some  form  of  industrial  or  real-estate 
speculation,  of  brokerage  business  enterprise,  or 
landlordism.  This  class  likes  to  say  sometimes 
that  it  is  "carrying  the  farmer."  It  would  be 
more  like  the  truth  to  say  that  the  farmer  is  carry 
ing  this  class.  Country  ultimately  has  to  support 
Town ;  and  Town,  by  holding  control  of  the  chan 
nels  of  credit  and  market,  can  make  the  farmer  pay 
up  to  the  hilt  for  the  privilege  of  selling  it  his 
product.  And  does.  When  the  farmers,  getting 
a  sense  of  the  true  workings  of  the  society  they  live 
in,  combine  in  a  Non-Partisan  League  to  control 
the  organism  of  market  and  credit,  they  find  they 
have  a  bitter  class  war  on  their  hands.  And  the 
authentic  voice  of  Mr.  Nicholson  here  scolds  them 
roundly  for  their  restlessness  and  sedition.  In 
this  ferocious  reaction  of  Town  against  Country's 

[137] 


socialistic  efforts  to  give  itself  economic  auton 
omy,  we  get  the  betrayal  of  the  social  malaise  of 
the  Middle  West,  a  confession  of  the  cleavage  of 
latent  class  conflict  in  a  society  as  exploitative,  as 
steeply  tilted,  as  tragically  extreme  in  its  poles  of 
well-being,  as  any  other  modern  society  based  on 
the  economic  absolutism  of  property. 

A  large  part  of  the  hopefulness,  the  spiritual 
comfort  of  the  Middle  West,  of  its  sturdy  belief 
in  itself,  must  be  based  on  the  inflexible  reluctance 
of  its  intelligentsia  to  any  such  set  of  ideas. 
However  thoroughly  Marxian  ideas  may  have  sat 
urated  the  thought  of  Europe  and  become  the  in 
tellectual  explosive  of  social  change,  the  Middle 
West,  as  in  this  book,  persists  in  its  robust  resist 
ance  to  any  such  analysis  or  self-knowledge.  It 
is  not  that  Mr.  Nicholson's  attitudes  are  not  true. 
It  is  that  they  are  so  very  much  less  than  the  whole 
truth.  They  need  to  be  supplemented  by  analysis 
set  in  the  terms  in  which  the  progressive  minds  of 
the  rest  of  the  world  are  thinking.  The  intelli 
gent  Middle  West  needs  to  sacrifice  a  certain 
amount  of  complacency  in  exchange  for  an  under 
standing  of  the  structure  of  its  own  society.  It 
would  then  realize  that  to  read  "The  Valley  of 

[138] 


Democracy"  in  conjunction  with  pages  315-323 
of  Veblen's  "Imperial  Germany  and  the  Industrial 
Revolution"  is  to  experience  one  of  the  most  pi 
quant  intellectual  adventures  granted  to  the  cur 
rent  mind. 


[139] 


ERNEST:  OR,  PARENT  FOR  A  DAY 


I  HAD  been  talking  rather  loosely  about  the 
bringing-up  of  children.  They  had  been  lately 
appearing  to  me  in  the  guise  of  infinitely  preva 
lent  little  beings  who  impressed  themselves  almost 
too  vividly  upon  one's  consciousness.  My  sum 
mer  vacation  I  had  passed  in  a  household  where  a 
vivacious  little  boy  of  two  years  and  a  solemn  lit 
tle  boy  of  six  months  had  turned  their  mother  into 
a  household  slave.  I  had  seen  walks,  conversa 
tions,  luncheons,  and  all  the  amenities  of  summer 
civilized  life,  shot  to  pieces  by  the  indomitable 
need  of  imperious  little  children  to  be  taken  care 
of.  Little  boys  who  came  running  at  you  smiling, 
stubbed  their  toes,  and  were  instantly  transformed 
into  wailing  inconsolables ;  babies  who  woke  im 
portunately  at  ten  o'clock  in  the  evening,  and  had 
to  be  brought  down  warm  and  blinking  before  the 

[  HO] 


fire;  human  beings  who  were  not  self -regulating, 
but  to  whom  every  hard  surface,  every  protuber 
ance,  was  a  menace  to  happiness,  and  in  whom 
every  want  and  sensation  was  an  order  and  claim 
upon  somebody  else — these  were  new  offerings  to 
my  smooth  and  independent  existence.  They  in 
terested  and  perturbed  me. 

The  older  little  boy,  with  his  sunny  luxuriance 
of  hair  and  cheek,  was  always  on  the  point  of  say 
ing  something  novel  and  disconcerting.  The 
baby,  with  his  deep  black  eyes,  seemed  to  be  wait 
ing  silently  and  in  soft  anticipation  for  life.  He 
would  look  at  you  so  calmly  and  yet  so  eagerly, 
and  give  you  a  pleasant  satisfaction  that  just  your 
mere  presence,  your  form,  your  movement,  were 
etching  new  little  lines  on  his  cortex,  sending  new 
little  shoots  of  feeling  through  his  nerves.  You 
were  being  part  of  his  education  just  by  letting  his 
consciousness  look  at  you.  I  liked  particularly  to 
hold  my  watch  to  his  ear,  and  see  the  sudden  grave 
concentration  of  his  face,  as  he  called  all  his  mind 
to  the  judgment  of  this  arresting  phenomenon.  I 
would  love  to  accost  him  as  he  lay  murmuring  in 
his  carriage,  and  to  check  his  little  breakings  into 
tears  by  quick  movements  of  my  hands.  He 

[HI] 


would  watch  me  intently  for  a  while  until  the  fact 
of  his  little  restless  woe  would  come  upon  him 
again.  I  was  challenged  then  to  something  more 
startling,  and  the  woe  would  disappear  in  little 
short  gasps.  But  I  would  find  that  he  was  sub 
ject  to  the  law  of  diminishing  returns.  The  mo 
ment  would  arrive  when  the  woe  submerged  every 
thing  in  a  wail,  and  his  mother  would  have  to  be 
called  to  nurse  or  coddle  him  in  the  magical  moth 
erly  way. 

The  baby  I  found  perhaps  more  interesting  than 
his  little  brother,  for  the  baby's  moods  had  more 
style  to  them.  The  brother  could  be  transformed 
from  golden  prattlingness  to  raging  storm,  with 
the  most  disconcerting  quickness.  He  could  want 
the  most  irrational  things  with  an  intensity  that 
got  itself  expressed  in  hypnotic  reiteration.  Some 
smoldering  will-to-power  in  one's  self  told  one 
that  a  child  should  never  be  given  the  thing  that 
he  most  wanted ;  and  yet  in  five  minutes  one  would 
have  given  him  one's  soul,  to  be  rid  of  the  brazen 
rod  which  he  pounded  through  one.  But  I  could 
not  keep  away  from  him.  He  and  his  baby 
brother  absorbed  me,  and  when  I  contemplated 
their  mother's  life,  I  had  many  a  solemn  sense  of 


the  arduousness  of  being  a  parent.  I  thought  of 
the  long  years  ahead  of  them,  and  the  incalculabil- 
ity  of  their  manifestations.  I  shuddered  and  re 
mained,  gloating,  I  am  afraid,  a  little  over  the 
opportunity  of  enjoyment  without  responsibility. 

All  these  things  I  was  recounting  the  other  even 
ing  after  dinner  to  a  group  of  friends  who  profes 
sionally  look  after  the  minds  and  bodies  of  the 
neglected.  I  was  explaining  my  absorption,  and 
the  perils  and  merciless  tyranny  of  the  mother's 
life,  and  my  thankfulness  at  having  been  so  much 
in,  and  yet  so  much  not  of,  the  child-world.  I 
was  not  responsible,  and  the  policeman  mother 
could  be  called  in  at  any  time  to  soothe  or  to 
quell.  I  could  always  maintain  the  amused  aloof 
ness  which  is  my  usual  attitude  toward  children. 
And  I  made  the  point  that  parenthood  must  be 
come  less  arduous  after  the  child  is  a  self-regulat 
ing  little  organism,  and  can  be  trusted  not  to  com 
mit  suicide  inadvertently  over  every  threshold,  can 
feed  himself,  dress  himself,  and  take  himself  rea 
sonably  around.  I  even  suggested  unwarily  that 
after  five  or  six  the  tyranny  was  much  mitigated. 

There  was  strong  dissent.  Just  at  that  age,  I 
was  told,  the  real  responsibilities  began.  I  was 

[  H3] 


living  in  a  fool's  paradise  of  bachelordom  if  I 
thought  that  at  six  children  were  grown-up.  One 
of  the  women  before  the  fire  made  it  her  business 
to  get  children  adopted.  I  had  a  sense  of  fore 
boding  before  she  spoke.  She  promptly  confirmed 
my  intuition  by  offering  to  endow  me  with  an  in 
fant  of  six  years,  for  a  day  or  for  as  long  as  I 
would  take  him.  The  hearty  agreement  of  the 
rest  amazed  and  alarmed  me.  They  seemed  de 
lighted  at  the  thought  of  my  becoming  parent  for 
a  day.  I  should  have  Ernest.  They  all  knew  Er 
nest;  and  I  should  have  him.  They  seemed  to 
have  no  concern  that  he  would  not  survive  my 
brief  parenthood.  It  rather  warmed  and  flattered 
me  to  think  that  they  trusted  me. 

I  had  a  sense  of  being  caught  in  an  inescapable 
net,  prisoner  of  my  own  theories.  If  children  of 
six  were  no  longer  tyrants,  the  possession  of  Ernest 
would  not  interfere  with  my  work  or  my  life.  I 
had  spoken  confidently.  I  had  a  reputation 
among  my  friends  of  speaking  eloquently  about 
"the  child."  And  I  always  find  it  almost  impos 
sible  to  resist  the  offer  of  new  experience.  I  hes 
itated  and  was  lost.  I  even  found  myself  naming 
the  day  for  Ernest's  momentary  adoption.  And 

[  H4] 


during  all  that  week  I  found  it  increasingly  impos 
sible  to  forget  him.  The  night  before  Ernest  was 
to  come  I  told  myself  that  I  could  not  believe  that 
this  perilous  thing  was  about  to  happen  to  me.  I 
made  no  preparations  to  receive  Ernest  in  my  tiny 
bachelor  apartment.  I  felt  that  I  was  in  the 
hands  of  fate. 

ii 

I  was  not  really  surprised  when  fate  knocked  at 
the  door  next  morning  in  the  person  of  my  grin 
ning  friend,  and  swiftly  left  a  well-bundled  little 
boy  with  me.  I  have  rarely  seen  a  young  woman 
look  as  maliciously  happy  as  did  his  guide  when 
she  left,  with  the  remark  that  she  couldn't  possibly 
come  for  Ernest  that  evening,  but  would  take  him 
at  nine  o'clock  on  the  morrow.  My  first  quick  re 
sentment  was  stilled  by  the  thought  that  perhaps 
an  official  day  was  a  day  plus  a  night.  But  Er 
nest  loomed  formidably  at  me.  There  would  be 
problems  of  sleeping.  Was  I  a  victim4?  Well, 
that  is  what  parents  were !  They  should  not  find 
me  weak. 

Ernest  expressed  no  aversion  to  staying  with 
me.  He  was  cheerful,  a  little  embarrassed,  in- 

[145] 


curious.  The  removal  of  his  hat  disclosed  a 
Dutch-cut  of  yellow  hair,  blue  eyes,  many  little 
freckles,  and  an  expression  of  slightly  quizzical 
good-humor.  I  really  had  not  had  the  least  con 
ception  how  big  a  boy  of  six  was  likely  to  be,  and 
I  found  comfort  in  the  evidence  that  he  was  big 
enough  to  be  self -regulating,  and  yet  deliciously 
small  enough  to  be  watched  over.  He  could  be 
played  with,  and  without  danger  of  breaking  him. 

Ernest  sat  passively  on  a  chair  and  surveyed  the 
room.  I  had  thought  a  little  pedantically  of  ex 
posing  him  to  some  Montessori  apparatus.  I  had 
got  nothing,  however.  The  room  suddenly  be 
came  very  inane;  the  piano  a  huge  packing-box, 
the  bookcases  offensive,  idiotic  shelves.  A  silly 
room  to  live  in!  A  room  practically  useless  for 
these  new  and  major  purposes  of  life.  I  was 
ashamed  of  my  surroundings,  for  I  felt  that  Er 
nest  was  surveying  me  with  contempt  and  re 
proach. 

It  suddenly  seemed  as  if  little  boys  must  like  to 
look  at  pictures.  Ernest  had  clambered  up  into 
a  big  chair,  and  was  sitting  flattened  against  its 
back,  his  legs  sticking  straight  out  in  front  of 
him,  and  a  look  of  mild  lassitude  on  his  face.  He 


took  with  some  alacrity  the  illustrated  newspaper 
supplement  which  I  gave  him,  but  my  conscience 
tortured  me  a  little  as  to  whether  his  interest  was 
the  desperate  one  of  demanding  something  for  his 
mind  to  feed  on,  however  arid  it  might  be,  or 
whether  it  was  a  genuine  aesthetic  response.  He 
gave  all  the  pictures  exactly  the  same  amount  of 
time,  rubbing  his  hand  over  each  to  make  sure  that 
it  was  flat,  and  he  showed  no  desire  to  talk  about 
anything  he  had  seen.  Since  most  of  the  pictures 
were  of  war,  my  pacifist  spirit  rebelled  against 
dwelling  on  them.  His  celerity  dismayed  me. 
It  became  necessary  to  find  more  pictures.  I  had 
a  sudden  horror  of  an  afternoon  of  picture-books, 
each  devoured  in  increasingly  accelerated  fashion. 
How  stupid  seemed  my  rows  of  dully  printed 
books !  Not  one  of  them  could  disgorge  a  picture, 
no  matter  how  hard  you  shook  it.  Despair  seized 
me  when  I  found  only  a  German  handbook  of 
Greek  sculpture,  and  another  of  Michelangelo. 
In  hopeful  trepidation  I  began  on  them.  I  won 
dered  how  long  they  would  last. 

It  was  clearly  an  unfamiliar  field  to  Ernest. 
My  attempts  to  test  his  classical  knowledge  were 
a  failure.  He  recognized  the  Greeks  as  men  and 

[147] 


women,  but  not  as  gods,  and  there  were  moments 
when  I  was  afraid  he  felt  their  nudity  as  indecent. 
He  insisted  on  calling  the  Winged  Victory  an  an 
gel.  There  had  evidently  been  religion  in  Er 
nest's  career.  I  told  him  that  these  were  pictures 
of  marble  statues  from  Greece,  of  gods  and  things, 
and  I  hurriedly  sketched  such  myths  as  I  could  re 
member  in  an  attempt  to  overtake  Ernest's  head 
long  rush  of  interest.  But  he  did  not  seem  to 
listen,  and  he  ended  by  calling  every  flowing  fe 
male  form  an  angel.  He  laughed  greatly  at  their 
missing  arms  and  heads.  I  do  not  think  I  quite 
impressed  him  with  the  Greek  spirit. 

On  Michelangelo  there  was  chance  to  test  his 
Biblical  background.  He  proved  never  to  have 
heard  of  David,  and  took  the  story  I  told  him  with 
a  little  amused  and  incredulous  chortle.  Moses 
was  new  to  him,  and  I  could  not  make  him  feel 
the  majesty  of  the  horns  and  beard.  When  we 
came  to  the  Sistine  I  felt  the  constraint  of  theol 
ogy.  Should  I  point  out  to  him  God  and  Adam 
and  Eve,  and  so  perhaps  fix  in  his  infant  mind  an 
ineradicable  theological  bias?  Now  I  understand 
the  temptation  which  every  parent  must  suffer, 
to  dose  his  child  with  easy  mythology.  Some- 


thing  urged  me  to  say,  Adam  was  the  first  man  and 
Eve  was  the  first  woman,  and  get  the  vague  glow 
of  having  imparted  godly  information.  But  I  am 
glad  that  I  had  the  strength  sternly  to  refrain, 
hoping  that  Ernest  was  too  intellectually  robust  to 
be  trifled  with.  I  confined  myself  to  pointing  out 
the  sweep  of  clouds,  the  majesty  of  the  prophets, 
the  cracks  in  the  plaster,  the  mighty  forms  of  the 
sibyls. 

But  with  my  last  sibyl  I  was  trapped.  It  smote 
my  thought  that  there  were  no  more  pictures. 
And  Ernest's  passivity  had  changed.  We  were 
sitting  on  the  floor,  and  his  limbs  began  to  take  on 
movement.  He  crawled  about,  and  I  thought  be 
gan  to  look  menacingly  at  movable  objects  on  ta 
bles.  My  phobia  of  the  combination  of  movable 
objects  and  children  returned.  Parenthood  sud 
denly  seemed  the  most  difficult  thing  in  the  world. 
Ernest  was  not  talking  very  much,  and  I  doubted 
my  ability  to  hold  him  very  long  entranced  in  con 
versation.  Imagination  came  to  my  relief  in  the 
thought  of  a  suburban  errand.  I  remembered  a 
wonderful  day  when  I  myself  had  been  taken  by 
my  uncle  to  the  next  town  on  a  journey — the  long 
golden  afternoon,  the  thundering  expresses  at  the 

[  H9] 


station,  the  amazing  watch  which  he  had  unac 
countably  presented  me  with  at  the  end  of  the  day. 
Ernest  should  be  taken  to  Brookfield. 

Our  lunch  had  to  be  taken  at  the  railroad  sta 
tion.  Ernest  climbed  with  much  puffing  up  to 
the  high  stool  by  the  lunch-counter,  and  sat  there 
unsteadily  and  triumphantly  while  I  tried  to  think 
what  little  boys  ate  for  their  lunch.  My  decision 
for  scrambled  eggs  and  a  glass  of  milk  was  unwise. 
The  excitement  of  feeding  scrambled  eggs  to  a 
slippery  little  boy  on  top  of  a  high  stool  was  full 
of  incredible  thrills.  The  business  of  preventing 
a  deluge  of  milk  whenever  Ernest  touched  his 
glass  forced  me  to  an  intellectual  concentration 
which  quite  made  me  forget  my  own  eating.  Er 
nest  himself  seemed  in  a  state  of  measureless  satis 
faction;  but  the  dizzy  way  in  which  he  brandished 
his  fork,  the  hairbreadth  escape  of  those  morsels 
of  food  as  they  passed  over  the  abyss  of  his  lap, 
the  new  and  strange  impression  of  smearedness 
one  got  from  his  face,  kept  me  in  a  state  of  absorp 
tion  until  I  found  we  had  but  one  minute  to  catch 
our  train.  With  Ernest  clutching  a  large  but 
tered  roll  which  he  had  decently  refused  to  re 
linquish,  we  rushed  through  the  gates, 


When  the  candy-man  came  through  the  train, 
Ernest  asked  me  in  the  most  detached  tone  in  the 
world  if  I  was  going  to  buy  any  candy.  And  I 
asked  him  with  a  similar  dryness  what  his  prefer 
ences  in  candy  were.  He  expressed  a  cool  interest 
in  lemon-drops.  The  marvelous  way  in  which  Er 
nest  did  not  eat  those  lemon-drops  gave  me  a  new 
admiration  for  his  self-control.  He  finished  his 
buttered  roll,  gazed  out  of  the  window,  casually 
ate  two  or  three  lemon-drops,  and  then  carefully 
closed  the  box  and  put  it  in  his  pocket.  I  was  al 
most  jealous  of  Ernest's  character.  I  recalled  my 
incorrigible  nibblings.  I  predicted  for  Ernest  a 
moral  life. 

Our  talk  was  mostly  of  the  things  that  flashed 
past  our  eyes.  I  was  interested  in  Ernest's  intel 
lectual  background.  Out  of  the  waste  of  sign 
boards  and  salt-meadows  there  was  occasionally 
disentangled  a  river  with  boats  or  a  factory  or  a 
lumber-yard  which  Ernest  could  be  called  upon  to 
identify.  He  was  in  great  good  humor,  squirm 
ing  on  his  seat,  and  he  took  delight  in  naming 
things  and  in  telling  me  of  other  trips  on  the  rail 
road  he  had  taken.  He  did  not  ask  where  we 
were  going.  I  told  him,  but  it  seemed  not  es- 


pecially  to  concern  him.  He  was  living  in  life's 
essential, — excitement, — and  neither  the  future 
nor  the  past  mattered.  He  held  his  own  ticket  a 
little  incredulously,  but  without  that  sense  of  the 
importance  of  the  business  that  I  had  looked  for. 
I  found  it  harder  and  harder  not  to  treat  him  as 
an  intellectual  equal. 

In  Brookfield  I  became  conscious  of  a  desire  to 
show  Ernest  off.  I  was  acquiring  a  proprietary 
interest  in  him.  I  was  getting  proud  of  his  good 
temper,  his  intelligence,  his  self-restraint,  his  ca 
pacity  for  enjoying  himself.  I  wanted  to  see  my 
pride  reflected  in  another  mind.  I  would  take 
him  to  my  wise  old  friend,  Beulah.  I  knew  how 
pleasurably  mystified  she  would  be  at  my  sudden 
possession  of  a  chubby,  yellow-haired  little  boy 
of  six. 

Ernest  had  a  delightful  hour  on  Beulah's  par 
lor  floor.  He  turned  somersaults,  he  shouted,  he 
played  that  I  was  an  evil  monster  who  was  trying 
to  catch  him.  He  would  crawl  up  warily  towards 
me  and  put  his  hand  on  my  sleepily  outstretched 
palm.  As  I  suddenly  woke  and  seized  him,  he 
would  dart  away  in  shrieks  of  fear  and  glee. 
When  I  caught  him,  I  would  feel  like  a  grim  ogre 


indeed,  for  his  face  would  cloud  and  little  tears 
shoot  into  his  eyes,  and  his  lips  would  curl  in  mor 
tal  fear.  And  then  I  would  let  him  go  tugging 
and  sprawling,  and  he  would  yell  with  joy,  and 
steal  back  with  ever-renewed  cunning  and  watch 
fulness.  When  he  had  eaten  Beulah's  cakes  and 
drunk  her  cocoa,  he  lay  back  in  a  big  chair,  glow 
ing  with  rosiness,  and  still  laughing  at  the  thought 
of  his  escape  from  my  ogredom. 

Our  minds  played  about  him.  I  tried  to  tease 
Beulah  into  adopting  him.  We  spoke  of  his  birth 
in  a  reformatory,  and  the  apparently  indomitable 
way  in  which  nature  had  erased  this  fact  from  his 
personality.  We  wondered  about  his  unknown 
mother,  and  his  still  more  unknown  father,  and 
what  he  would  be  and  how  either  of  us  could  help 
keeping  him  forever.  She  pleaded  her  Man,  I  my 
poverty.  But  we  were  not  convincing,  and  I  be 
gan  to  conceive  a  vague  fear  of  Ernest's  adopting 
me,  because  I  could  not  let  him  go. 

And  then  it  was  time  for  the  train.  Ernest 
was  very  self-possessed.  His  manners  on  leaving 
Beulah  were  those  of  an  equal,  parting  from  a  very 
old  and  jolly  friend.  The  walk  to  the  station 
gave  me  a  sudden  realization  how  very  badly  the 

[153] 


world  was  adapted  to  the  needs  of  little  boys.  Its 
measurements,  its  times,  its  lengths  and  its 
breadths  were  grotesquely  exaggerated.  Ernest 
ploughed  manfully  along,  but  I  could  feel  the  tug 
at  my  hand.  Time  would  have  to  double  itself 
for  him  to  reach  the  station  in  the  allotted  min 
utes.  His  legs  were  going  in  great  strides  like 
those  of  the  giant  in  seven-league  boots,  and  he 
was  panting  a  little.  I  was  cruel,  and  yet  there 
was  the  train.  I  felt  myself  a  symbol  of  parent 
hood,  earth-adjusted,  fixed  on  an  adult  goal,  drag 
ging  little  children  panting  through  a  world  not 
their  own.  "I'm  ti-yerd !"  said  Ernest  in  so  plain 
tive  a  voice  that  my  heart  smote  me.  Nameless 
premonitions  of  what  might  ensue  to  Ernest  from 
being  ti-yerd  came  upon  me.  I  felt  a  vague  dread 
of  having  already  made  Ernest  an  invalid  for  life. 
But  my  adulthood  must  have  triumphed,  for  the 
train  was  caught.  Ernest's  spirits  revived  on  the 
reappearance  of  the  lemon-drops.  And  my  heart 
leaped  to  hear  him  say  that  only  his  legs  were  ti- 
yerd,  and  that  now  they  were  no  longer  so.  The 
world  had  diminished  again  to  his  size. 


[154] 


Ill 

Ernest  ate  his  supper  in  great  contentment  at  a 
little  table  by  my  fireplace.  The  unaccustomed 
task  of  cooking  it  gave  me  new  and  vivid  thrills. 
And  the  intellectual  concentration  involved  in 
heating  soup  and  making  toast  was  so  great  as  to 
lose  me  the  pleasure  of  watching  Ernest  draw.  I 
had  asked  him  in  the  morning  if  he  liked  to  draw. 
He  had  answered  in  such  scorn  that  I  had  hastily 
called  in  Michelangelo.  Now  I  placed  a  pencil 
and  many  large  sheets  of  paper  negligently  near 
him.  When  I  brought  him  his  supper,  he  had 
covered  them  all  with  futuristic  men,  houses,  and 
horses.  The  floor  was  strewn  with  his  work,  and 
he  was  magnificently  casting  it  from  him  as  he  at 
tacked  these  aesthetic  problems  with  fierce  gusto. 
Only  the  sight  of  food  quelled  his  artistic  rage. 
After  supper,  however,  he  did  not  return  to  them. 
Instead,  he  became  fascinated  with  the  pillows  of 
my  couch,  and  piled  them  in  a  line,  with  a  whis 
tling  and  shouting  as  of  railroad  trains.  I  wrote 
a  little,  merely  to  show  myself  that  this  business  of 
parenthood  need  not  devastate  one's  life.  But  I 
found  myself  wondering  acutely,  in  the  midst  of 

[  155  ] 


an  eloquent  sentence,  what  time  it  was  healthy  for 
Ernest  to  go  to  bed.  I  seemed  to  remember  seven 
—incredible  to  me,  and  yet  perhaps  meet  for  a 
child.  It  was  already  seven,  but  the  vigor  with 
which  he  rejected  my  proposal  startled  me.  His 
amiability  all  day  had  been  so  irreproachable  that 
I  did  not  wish  to  strain  it  now.  Yet  I  was  con 
scious  of  an  approaching  parental  crisis.  Suppose 
he  did  not  want  to  go  to  bed  at  all! 

When  I  next  looked  up,  I  found  that  he  had 
compromised  by  falling  asleep  in  a  curious  diag 
onal  and  perilous  position  across  his  pillows — the 
trainman  asleep  at  the  switch.  In  a  position  in 
which  nobody  could  sleep,  Ernest  slept  with  the 
face  of  an  angel.  Complexity !  Only  a  brute 
would  wake  him.  Yet  how  did  parents  get  their 
children  to  bed?  And  then  I  thought  of  the  in 
tricacies  of  his  clothes.  I  touched  him  very  gen 
tly;  he  jumped  at  me  in  a  dazed  way,  with  the 
quaintest,  "Oh,  I  don't  know  what  made  me  go 
to  sleep !"  and  was  off  into  the  big  chair  and  help 
less  slumber. 

I  repented  of  my  brutality.  I  tried  to  read,  but 
my  parental  conscience  again  smote  me.  Ernest 
looked  forlorn  and  maladjusted,  his  head  sinking 


down  on  his  breast.  I  thought  that  Ernest  would 
thank  me  now  for  reminding  him  of  his  bed.  He 
showed  astonishing  force  of  will.  I  recoiled  from 
the  "I  don't  want  to  go  to  bed !"  which  he  hurled 
at  me.  I  tried  reason.  I  called  his  attention  to 
his  uncomfortableness.  But  he  was  unmoved, 
and  insisted  on  going  to  sleep  again  after  every 
question.  I  hardened  my  heart  a  little.  I  saw 
that  stern  measures  would  have  to  be  adopted, 
Ernest's  little  clothes  taken  off,  Ernest  inserted 
into  his  flannel  nightgown,  and  tucked  into  bed. 
Yet  I  had  no  idea  of  the  parental  technique  for 
such  situations.  Ernest  had  been  quite  irrespon 
sive  to  my  appeal  that  all  good  little  boys  went  to 
bed  at  seven  o'clock,  and  I  could  think  of  no  fur 
ther  generalizations.  Crisis  after  so  happy  a  day ! 
Was  this  parenthood? 

The  variety  of  buttons  and  hooks  on  Ernest's 
outer  and  inner  garments  bewildered  me.  Er 
nest's  dead  sleepiness  made  the  work  difficult. 

But  finally  his  little  body  emerged  from  the  midst, 

.• 

leaving  me  with  the  feeling  of  one  who  has  taken 
a  watch  apart  and  wonders  dismayedly  how  he 
will  ever  get  it  together  again.  Ernest,  however, 
was  not  inclined  to  permit  the  indignity  of  this 

[157] 


disrobing  without  bitter  protest.  When  I  urged 
his  cooperation  in  putting  on  his  nightgown,  he 
became  voluble.  The  sunniness  of  his  temper 
was  clouded.  His  tone  turned  to  harsh  bitterness. 
Little  angry  tears  rolled  down  his  cheeks,  and  he 
betrayed  his  sense  of  extreme  outrage  with  an  "I 
don't  want  to  put  on  my  nightgown!''  hurled  at 
me  with  so  much  of  moral  pain  that  I  was  chilled. 
But  it  was  too  late.  I  could  not  unscramble  Er 
nest.  With  a  sinking  heart  I  had  gently  to  thrust 
his  little  arms  and  legs  into  the  warm  flannel,  trun 
dle  him  over  the  floor,  bitter  and  sleepily  protest 
ing,  roll  him  into  his  bed,  and  cover  him  up.  As 
he  curled  and  snuggled  into  the  covers  his  tears 
dried  as  if  by  magic,  the  bitterness  smoothed  out 
of  his  face,  and  all  his  griefs  were  forgotten. 

IV 

In  the  next  room  I  sat  and  read,  a  pleasant 
warmth  of  parental  protection  in  my  heart.  And 
then  Ernest  began  to  cough.  It  was  no  light 
childish  spasm,  but  a  deep  racking  cough  that 
froze  my  blood.  There  had  been  a  little  cold  in 
him  when  he  came.  I  had  taken  him  out  into  the 
raw  December  air.  I  had  overexerted  him  in  my 


thoughtless  haste.  Visions  of  a  delirious  and 
pneumonic  child  floated  before  me.  Or  what 
was  that  dreadful  thing  called  croup?  I  could 
not  keep  my  thought  on  my  book.  That  racking 
cough  came  again  and  again.  Ernest  must  be 
awake  and  tossing  feverishly.  Yet  when  I  looked 
in  at  him,  he  would  be  lying  peaceful  and  rosy, 
and  the  cough  that  tore  him  did  not  disturb  his 
slumbers.  He  must  then  be  in  a  state  of  fatigue 
so  extreme  that  even  the  cough  could  not  wake 
him.  I  reproached  myself  for  dragging  him  into 
the  cold.  How  could  I  have  led  him  on  so  long 
a  journey,  and  let  him  play  with  a  strenuousness 
such  as  his  days  never  knew!  I  foresaw  a  lurid 
to-morrow :  Ernest  sick,  myself  helpless  and  igno 
rant,  guilty  of  a  negligence  that  might  be  fatal. 
And  as  I  watched  him,  he  began  to  show  the  most 
alarming  tendency  to  fall  out  of  bed.  I  did  not 
dare  to  move  him,  and  yet  his  head  moved  ever 
more  perilously  near  the  edge.  I  relied  on  a  chair 
pushed  close  to  the  bed  to  save  him.  But  I  felt 
weary  and  worn.  What  an  exacting  life,  the  pa 
rent's  !  Could  it  be  that  every  evening  provided 
such  anxieties  and  problems  and  thrills?  Could 
one  let  one's  life  become  so  engrossed? 

[159] 


And  then  I  remembered  how  every  evening, 
when  we  went  to  bed,  we  used  to  ask  our  mother  if 
she  was  going  to  be  home  that  evening,  and  with 
what  thankful  security  we  sank  back,  knowing 
that  we  should  be  protected  through  another  night. 
Ernest  had  not  seemed  to  care  what  became  of  me. 
Having  had  no  home  and  no  parents,  he  had 
grown  up  into  a  manly  robustness.  He  did  not 
ask  what  you  were  going  to  do  with  him.  He  was 
all  for  the  moment.  He  took  the  cash  and  let  the 
credit  go.  It  was  I  who  felt  the  panic  and  the  in 
security.  I  envied  Ernest.  I  saw  that  contrary 
to  popular  mythology,  there  were  advantages  in 
being  an  institutional  orphan,  provided  you  had 
been  properly  Binet-ed  as  of  normal  intelligence 
and  the  State  got  you  a  decent  boarding-mother. 
How  much  bringing  up  Ernest  had  escaped !  If 
his  manners  were  not  polished,  at  least  they  were 
not  uncouth.  He  had  been  a  little  shy  at  first, 
nodding  at  questions  with  a  smile,  and  throwing 
his  head  against  the  chair.  But  there  was  nothing 
repressed  about  him,  nothing  institutionalized,  and 
certainly  nothing  artificial. 

His  cough  grew  lighter,  and  as  I  looked  at  his 
yellow  hair  and  the  angelic  flush  of  his  round 

[160] 


cheeks,  I  thought  of  the  horrid  little  puppets  that 
had  been  produced  around  me  in  conventional 
homes,  under  model  fathers  and  kind  and  devout 
mothers.  How  their  fears  and  inhibitions  con 
trasted  with  Ernest's  directness !  His  bitter  mood 
at  going  to  bed  had  a  certain  fine  quality  about  it. 
I  recalled  the  camaraderie  we  had  established. 
The  box  of  lemon-drops,  only  half-exhausted, 
stared  at  me  from  the  pocket  of  his  little  sweater. 
I  became  proud  of  Ernest.  I  was  enjoying  again 
my  vicarious  parenthood.  What  did  that  obscure 
and  tangled  heredity  of  his,  or  his  most  problemat 
ical  of  futures,  matter  to  him  or  to  me?  It  was 
delightful  to  adopt  him  thus  imaginatively.  If 
he  turned  out  badly,  could  you  not  ascribe  it  to  his 
heredity,  and  if  well,  to  your  kindly  nurture  and 
constant  wisdom?  Nothing  else  could  be  very 
much  thought  about,  perhaps,  but  for  the  moment 
Ernest  seemed  supremely  worth  thinking  about. 
There  would  be  his  education.  And  suddenly  it 
seemed  that  I  did  not  know  very  much  about  edu 
cating  a  child.  It  would  be  too  absorbing. 
There  would  be  no  time  for  the  making  of  a  living. 
Ernest  loomed  before  my  imagination  in  the  guise 
of  a  pleasant  peril. 


And  then  morning  came.  As  soon  as  it  was 
light  Ernest  could  be  heard  talking  and  chuckling 
to  himself,  with  no  hint  of  delirium  or  pneumonia, 
or  the  bogies  of  the  night.  When  I  spoke  he  came 
running  in  in  his  bare  feet,  and  crawled  in  with 
me.  He  told  me  that  in  spite  of  my  valiant  chair 
he  had  really  fallen  out  of  bed.  He  did  not  care, 
and  proceeded  to  jump  over  me  in  a  vigorous  acro 
batic  way.  He  did  not  even  cough,  and  I  won 
dered  if  all  the  little  sinister  things  of  childhood 
passed  so  easily  with  the  night.  It  was  impossible 
to  remember  my  fears  as  he  tossed  and  shouted,  the 
perfection  of  healthiness.  Parenthood  now 
seemed  almost  too  easy  to  bother  with. 

Ernest  caught  sight  of  my  dollar  watch  on  the 
chair,  and  I  saw  that  he  conceived  a  fatal  and  in 
stantaneous  passion.  He  listened  to  its  tick, 
shook  it,  ogled  it  amorously.  He  made  little  sug 
gestive  remarks  about  liking  it.  I  teased  him  with 
the  fact  that  he  could  not  tell  time.  Ernest 
snorted  at  first  in  good-natured  contempt  at  the  ar 
tificial  rigidity  of  the  process,  but  finally  allowed 
himself  to  be  persuaded  that  I  was  not  fooling  him. 
And  my  heart  swelled  with  the  generosity  which  I 


was  about  to  practise  in  presenting  him  with  this 
wonderful  watch. 

But  it  suddenly  became  time  to  dress,  for  my 
parental  day  was  to  end  at  nine.  And  then  I  dis 
covered  that  it  was  as  hard  to  get  Ernest  into  his 
clothes  as  it  was  to  get  him  out  of  them.  It  was 
intolerable  to  him  that  he  should  leave  his  romp 
and  the  watch,  and  he  shouted  a  No  to  my  every 
suggestion.  A  new  parental  crisis  crashed  upon 
me.  What  a  life  of  ingenuity  and  stratagem  the 
parent  had  to  lead !  To  spend  half  one's  evening 
persuading  a  sleepy  and  bitter  little  boy  to  take  off 
his  clothes,  and  half  the  morning  in  persuading  a 
vivid  and  jubilant  little  boy  to  put  them  on  again 
— this  was  a  life  that  taxed  one's  personal  re 
sources  to  the  utmost.  I  reasoned  with  Ernest. 
I  pointed  out  that  his  kind  friend  was  coming  very 
soon,  and  that  he  must  be  ready.  But  Ernest  was 
obdurate.  He  would  not  even  bathe.  I  pointed 
out  the  almost  universal  practice  of  the  human 
race  of  clothing  themselves  during  the  early  morn 
ing  hours.  Historic  generalizations  had  no  more 
effect  on  Ernest  in  the  morning  than  they  had  had 
in  the  evening.  And  with  a  sudden  stab  I  thought 

[163] 


of  the  watch.  That  watch  I  knew  would  be  an 
Aladdin's  lamp  to  make  Ernest  my  obedient  slave. 
I  had  only  to  bribe  him  with  it,  and  he  would 
bathe,  dress,  or  do  anything  which  I  told  him  to 
do.  Here  was  the  easy  art  of  corruption  by  which 
parents  got  moral  clutches  on  their  children! 
And  I  deliberately  renounced  it.  I  would  not 
bribe  Ernest.  Yet  the  mischief  was  done.  So  in 
tuitive  was  his  mind  that  I  felt  guiltily  that  he  al 
ready  knew  my  readiness  to  give  him  the  watch 
if  he  would  only  dress.  In  that  case,  I  should 
rniss  my  moral  victory.  I  could  not  disappoint 
him,  and  I  did  not  want  to  bribe  him  inadvert 
ently. 

There  was  another  consideration  which  dis 
mayed  me.  Even  if  Ernest  should  prove  amen 
able  to  reason  or  corruption,  where  was  my  ability 
to  reconstruct  him?  Unbuttoning  a  sleepy  and 
scarcely  resisting  little  boy  in  the  evening  was 
quite  different  from  constructively  buttoning  a 
jumping  and  hilarious  one  in  the  morning.  And 
time  was  flowing  dangerously  on.  Only  a  sud 
den  theory  of  self-activity  saved  me.  Could  Er 
nest  perhaps  dress  himself?  I  caught  him  in  one 
of  his  tumbles  and  asked  him.  His  mind  was  too 


full  of  excitement  j  to  be  working  on  prosaic 
themes.  And  then  I  shot  my  bolt.  "I  don't  be 
lieve  you  know  how  to  dress  yourself,  do  you^" 
To  that  challenge  Ernest  rose.  "Hurry !"  I  said, 
"and  see  how  quickly  you  can  dress.  See  if  you 
can  dress  before  I  can!"  Ernest  flew  into  the 
other  room,  and  in  an  incredibly  short  time  ap 
peared  quite  constructed  except  as  to  an  occasional 
rear-button,  washed  and  shining,  self-reliant, 
ready  for  the  business  of  the  day.  I  glowed  with 
the  success  of  my  parental  generalship.  I  felt  a 
sense  of  power.  But  power  gained  in  so  adroit 
and  harmless  a  way  was  safe.  What  a  parent  I 
would  make!  How  grateful  I  was  to  Ernest  to 
be  leaving  me  at  this  height! 

I  gave  him  the  watch.  Though  he  had  longed, 
the  fulfillment  of  his  desire  struck  him  with  in 
credulity.  The  event  awed  him.  But  I  showed 
him  how  to  wind  it,  and  seemed  so  indifferent  to 
its  fate  that  he  was  reassured  as  to  my  sincerity. 
He  recovered  his  poise.  He  sang  as  he  ate  his 
breakfast.  And  when  his  guide  and  friend  came, 
amused  and  curious,  he  went  off  with  her  as  unre- 
luctantly  as  he  had  come,  proud  and  self-possessed, 
the  master  of  himself.  He  strutted  a  little  with 

[165] 


his  watch,  and  he  politely  admitted  that  he  had 
had  a  good  time. 

I  do  not  know  whether  Ernest  ever  thought  of 
me  again.  He  had  been  an  unconscious  artist, 
for  he  had  painted  many  new  impressions  on  my 
soul.  He  had  been  sent  to  me  to  test  my  theories 
of  parenthood,  but  he  had  driven  away  all  thought 
of  theory  in  the  'obsession  of  his  demands.  How 
could  I  let  him  go  so  cheerily  out  of  my  door?  It 
wasn't  at  all  because  I  minded  having  my  time  ab 
sorbed,  for  I  like  people  to  absorb  my  time.  Why 
did  I  not  cling  to  him,  buy  him  from  his  protector, 
with  a  "Dear  boy,  you  shall  never  leave  my  pleas 
ant  rooms  again"  *?  Why  did  I  not  rush  after  him 
down  the  street,  stung  by  a  belated  remorse"?  I 
was  conscious  enough  that  I  was  missing  all  the 
dramatic  climax  of  the  situation.  I  was  not  act 
ing  at  all  as  one  does  with  tempting  little  orphan 
boys.  But  that  is  the  way  life  works.  The  heart 
fails,  and  the  vast  and  incalculable  sea  of  respon 
sibility  drowns  one  in  doubt.  I  let  him  go  with 
no  more  real  hesitation  than  that  with  which  he 
went. 

The  later  life  of  Ernest  I  feel  will  be  one  of 
sturdy  self-reliance.  That  all  the  aspects  of  his 

[166] 


many-sided  character  did  not  become  apparent  in 
the  short  time  that  I  held  him  was  clear  from  the 
report  I  heard  of  a  Christmas  party  to  which  he 
was  invited  a  few  weeks  later.  Ernest,  it  seems, 
had  broken  loose  with  the  fervor  of  a  modern 
Europe  after  its  forty  years  of  peace.  He  had 
seized  chocolate  cake,  slapped  little  girls,  bitten 
the  hand  of  the  kind  lady  who  fed  him,  and  ended 
by  lying  down  on  the  floor  and  yelling  in  a  self-re 
liant  rage.  Was  this  the  effect  of  a  day  with  me? 
Or  had  I  charmed  and  soothed  him*?  I  had  a 
pleasant  shudder  of  power,  wondering  at  my  influ 
ence  over  him. 

The  next  I  heard  of  Ernest  was  his  departure 
for  the  home  of  an  adopting  family  in  New  Jersey, 
from  which  he  was  presently  to  be  shipped  back 
for  offenses  unknown.  My  respect  for  Ernest  rose 
even  higher.  He  would  not  fit  in  easily  to  any 
smug  conventional  family  life.  He  would  not 
rest  adopted  until  he  was  satisfied.  I  began  to 
wonder  if,  after  all,  we  were  not  affinities.  He 
had  kept  the  peace  with  me,  he  had  derived  stim 
ulation  from  my  society.  Should  I  not  have 
called  him  back?  Shall  I  not  now?  Shall  I  not 
want  to  see  him  with  me  again?  I  wonder. 


ON  DISCUSSION 

GRAHAM  WALLAS,  in  his  "Great  Society," 
wrote  few  more  interesting  sentences  than  that  in 
which  he  remarked  the  paucity  of  genuine  discus 
sion  around  him,  the  lack  of  skill  in  meeting  each 
others'  minds  which  Englishmen  show  when  they 
talk  together.  Particularly  in  this  country  where 
mere  talk  is  always  contrasted  unfavorably  with 
action  is  discussion  rare.  The  only  way  we  can 
justify  our  substitution  of  talking  for  acting  is  to 
talk  badly.  And  we  like  to  talk  badly.  To  put 
into  talk  the  deliberate  effort  which  action  de 
mands  would  seem  an  insufferable  pedantry. 
Talk  is  one  of  the  few  unspecialized  talents  still 
left  in  a  mechanical  world.  The  plain  man  re 
sents  any  invasion  of  this  last  preserve  of  freedom. 
He  resents  the  demand  that  skill  and  effort  be  put 
to  work  in  raising  talk  into  real  discussion  where 
points  are  met  and  presuppositions  are  clarified 
and  formulations  made.  So  conversation  is  left 

[168] 


to  grow  wild  as  a  common  flower  along  the  way 
side  of  our  personal  contacts. 

Yet  this  lack  of  art  in  discussion  is  not  really 
due  to  lack  of  desire.  An  inner  need  drives  talk 
into  something  more  formal.  Discussion  is  popu 
lar,  and  because  it  is  popular  it  needs,  in  spite  of 
the  plain  man,  a  certain  deliberate  technique. 
One  often  stumbles  on  groups  which  have  met  not 
because  some  problem  has  seized  them  all  and  will 
not  let  them  go  until  it  is  satisfied,  but  because 
they  have  felt  a  general  craving  for  talk.  They 
find  that  their  mental  wheels  will  not  rotate  with 
out  some  corn  to  grind.  In  the  revelation  of  what 
each  person  thinks  it  important  to  discuss,  one  gets 
the  attitude  of  his  mind  and  the  color  of  his  gov 
erning  philosophy.  Such  a  group  is  a  kind  of  kin 
dergarten  of  discussion.  Ostensibly  equal  and 
sympathetic  in  background  and  approach,  they 
show  in  very  little  time  the  startling  diversity  of 
their  actual  equipment  and  mental  framework.  A 
score  of  people  all  doing  apparently  the  same  qual 
ity  of  work  in  the  professional  world,  all  enjoying 
a  popular  reputation,  all  backed  by  a  college  edu 
cation,  all  reacting  constantly  to  each  other  in  the 
intersecting  world  of  journalism,  art,  teaching, 

[,69] 


law,  will  often  be  found  to  show  a  lack  of  mental 
sympathy  so  profound  that  one  wonders  how  such 
people  can  smilingly  continue  to  seem  to  be  living 
in  the  same  world.  They  are  using  the  same 
words,  but  they  are  not  using  the  same  meanings, 
and  because  they  are  not  conscious  that  it  is  really 
meanings  which  they  should  be  exchanging,  the 
discussion  is  apt  to  lose  itself  feebly  as  in  desert 
sands.  What  really  emerges  from  most  discus 
sions,  you  find,  is  an  astonishing  array  of  philo 
sophical  skeletons-in-the-closet  which  stalk  about 
the  room  unchallenged.  Their  owners  are  quite 
unconscious  of  this  fatal  escape.  Yet  it  takes  lit 
tle  wit  to  discover  rigid  platonists  discoursing  with 
pragmatists,  minds  whose  first  operation  in  think 
ing  is  always  to  fix  a  moral  judgment  contending 
with  remorseless  realists.  Ideals  are  discussed 
when  one  man  means  by  an  ideal  a  measuring-stick 
for  human  conduct,  another  a  social  goal  towards 
which  he  works.  Concepts  emerge  which  to  half 
the  company  represent  a  mental  vacuum,  and  to 
the  other  half  imply  a  warm  blow  of  virtue. 
World-philosophies  which  might  be  recognized  are 
shabbily  ignored.  The  feeble  sparring  of  their 
distorted  shadows  is  taken  for  discussion,  and  the 


company  separates  with  a  vague  feeling  of  having 
occupied  itself  for  an  evening  with  something 
profitably  mental. 

All  the  time,  however,  it  is  these  fundamental 
philosophies  which  are  the  real  antagonists,  and 
not  the  concrete  ideas  which  are  the  subjects  of  dis 
cussion.  A  good  discussion  passes  rapidly  into  an 
examination  of  those  presuppositions.  It  is  more 
interested  in  charting  out  the  minds  of  the  other 
talkers  than  in  winning  small  victories  or  getting 
agreements.  Good  discussion  is  a  kind  of  detec 
tive  uncovering  the  hidden  categories  and  secret 
springs  of  emotion  that  underlie  "opinions"  on 
things.  It  seeks  that  common  background  and 
store  of  meanings  in  which  alone  diverse  opinions 
can  really  meet  and  operate.  We  can  no  longer 
tolerate  reasons  which  are  only  retrospective  props 
for  action  that  was  really  impulsive  in  its  origin. 
No  more  should  we  tolerate  in  discussion  that 
stubborn  voicing  of  attitudes  which  seem  axiom 
atic  to  the  speaker  only  because  he  has  never  exam 
ined  the  structure  of  his  own  thought.  It  is  pop 
ular  nowadays  to  welcome  the  expression  of  every 
new  attitude.  But  a  discussion  should  be  tolerant 
and  hospitable  only  after  the  ground  has  been 

[171] 


cleared.  You  must  be  very  sure  that  what  you 
have  to  deal  with  is  a  real  attitude  and  not  a  coun 
terfeit.  Discussion  remains  mere  talk  if  it  re 
mains  content  with  the  expression  of  an  "opin 
ion"  and  does  not  put  the  expressor  to  immediate 
cross-examination  to  discover  in  the  name  of  what 
Weltanschauung  the  opinion  came. 

Discussion  should  be  one  of  the  most  important 
things  in  the  world,  for  it  is  almost  our  only  arena 
of  thinking.  It  is  here  that  all  the  jumble  of  ideas 
and  impressions  that  we  get  from  reading  and 
watching  are  dramatically  placed  in  conflict. 
Here  only  is  there  a  genuine  challenge  to  put  them 
into  some  sort  of  order.  Without  discussion  in 
tellectual  experience  is  only  an  exercise  in  a  pri 
vate  gymnasium.  It  has  never  been  put  to  the 
test,  never  had  to  give  an  account  of  itself.  It  is 
some  such  motive  that  impels  people  to  discussion; 
though  they  are  too  often  content  with  the  joust 
ing  of  pasteboard  knights.  But  a  good  discussion 
is  not  only  a  conflict.  It  is  fundamentally  a  co 
operation.  It  progresses  towards  some  common 
understanding.  This  does  not  mean  that  it  must 
end  in  agreement.  A  discussion  will  have  been 
adequate  if  it  has  done  no  more  than  set  the  prob- 


lem  in  its  significant  terms,  or  even  defined  the 
purpose  that  makes  such  a  setting  significant. 
You  turn  up  things  in  your  mind  that  would  have 
remained  buried  without  the  incision  of  some  new 
idea.  The  effort  to  say  exactly  what  you  mean, 
sharpening  your  idea  to  the  point  that  will  drive 
home  to  others,  is  itself  invigorating.  A  good  dis 
cussion  tones  up  your  mind,  concentrates  its  loose 
particles,  gives  form  and  direction.  When  all 
say  exactly  what  they  mean,  then  for  the  first  time 
understanding — the  goal  of  discussion — is  pos 
sible. 

Discussion  demands  a  mutual  trustfulness,  a 
mutual  candor.  But  this  very  trustfulness  makes 
discussion  vulnerable.  It  is  particularly  open  to 
the  attack  of  the  person  who  sees  in  the  group  a 
forum.  The  physical  signs  of  such  a  misinter 
pretation  are  familiar.  The  eye  becomes  slightly 
dilated,  the  voice  more  orotund.  The  suggestion 
develops  into  an  exposition,  the  exposition  into  an 
apologia  or  recrimination.  Discussion  is  slain. 
Another  enemy  is  the  person  who  sidetracks  a  sen 
tence  and  then  proceeds,  in  a  leisurely  way  to  un 
load  its  freight  into  his  own  wagon.  But  in  a 
good  discussion  the  traffic  is  kept  constantly  mov- 

[173] 


ing  in  both  directions  along  a  rather  rigid  line  of 
track,  and  the  freight  arrives  somewhere.  Some 
people  have  a  fatal  gift  of  derailment.  Wit  is 
perhaps  the  most  common  means.  Discussion  has 
no  greater  enemies  than  those  who  can  catch  an 
idea  and  touch  it  off  into  a  puff  of  smoke.  Wit 
should  salt  a  discussion  but  not  explode  it. 

Good  discussion  is  so  important  that  those  who 
set  about  it  may  be  rather  pedantic  and  self-con 
scious  in  their  enterprise.  One  may  acutely  real 
ize  himself  as  being,  for  the  time,  primarily  a 
mind.  He  renounces  the  seeming  of  personal  ad 
vantage  in  an  argument.  He  sincerely  and  anx 
iously  searches  his  intellectual  stores  in  order  to  set 
down  exactly  what  he  thinks  in  just  the  propor 
tions  and  colors  that  he  thinks  it.  He  studies 
what  the  others  say,  and  tries  to  detect  quickly  the 
search  for  advantage  or  the  loose  use  of  terminol 
ogy.  He  insists  that  words  and  phrases  have 
meanings,  and  if  they  carry  no  meaning  to  him,  he 
searches  indefatigably  until  he  has  found  the  word 
that  does  carry  over  the  full  freight  of  significance 
intended. 

The  rewards  for  such  pedantry  are  found  in  a 
tone  of  clear  thinking.  A  good  discussion  in- 

[174] 


creases  the  dimensions  of  every  one  who  takes 
part.  Being  rather  self-consciously  a  mind  in  a 
group  of  minds  means  becoming  more  of  a  person. 
Ideas  are  stale  things  until  they  are  personally 
dramatized.  The  only  good  writers  of  opinion 
are  those  who  instinctively  reproduce  the  atmo 
sphere  of  discussion,  whose  sentences  have  the  tone 
of  discussion  with  themselves  or  with  an  imagined 
group.  The  impulse  for  discussion  is  an  impulse 
towards  the  only  environment  where  creative 
thinking  can  be  done.  All  the  more  reason  why 
an  instinct  for  workmanship  should  come  in  to 
insure  that  thought  does  not  lose  itself  in  feeble 
sparring  or  detached  monologue. 


[175] 


THE  PURITAN'S  WILL  TO  POWER 

To  the  modern  young  person  who  tries  to  live 
well  there  is  no  type  so  devastating  and  harassing 
as  the  puritan.  We  cannot  get  away  from  him. 
In  his  sight  we  always  live.  We  finish  with  just 
ifying  our  new  paganism  against  him,  but  we 
never  quite  lose  consciousness  of  his  presence. 
Even  Theodore  Dreiser,  who  has  always  revolted 
from  the  puritan  clutch,  finds  it  necessary  now 
and  then  to  tilt  a  lance  against  him.  If  there 
were  no  puritans  we  should  have  to  invent  them. 
And  if  the  pagan  Mr.  Dreiser  has  to  keep  on 
through  life  fighting  puritans,  how  much  more  in 
trigued  must  we  be  who  are  only  reformed  puri 
tans,  and  feel  old  dangers  stirring  at  every  aggres 
sive  gesture  of  righteousness?  For  the  puritan  is 
the  most  stable  and  persistent  of  types.  It  is 
scarcely  a  question  of  a  puritanical  age  and  a 
pagan  age.  It  is  only  a  question  of  more  puritans 
or  less  puritans.  Even  the  most  emancipated  gen- 

[176] 


eration  will  find  that  it  has  only  broken  its 
puritanism  up  into  compartments,  and  balances 
Sexual  freedom — or  better,  perhaps,  a  pious  belief 
in  sexual  freedom — with  a  cult  of  efficiency  and 
personal  integrity  which  is  far  more  coercive  than 
the  most  sumptuary  of  laws.  Young  people  who 
have  given  up  all  thought  of  "being  good"  anxi 
ously  celebrate  a  cult  of  "making  good."  And  a 
superstition  like  eugenics  threatens  to  terrorize  the 
new  intelligentsia. 

Every  new  generation,  in  fact,  contrives  to  find 
some  new  way  of  being  puritanical.  Every  new 
generation  finds  some  new  way  of  sacrifice. 
Every  new  triumphant  assertion  of  life  is  counter 
balanced  by  some  new  denial.  In  Europe  this 
most  proud  and  lusty  young  generation  goes  to  its 
million-headed  slaughter,  and  in  America  the  so 
cial  consciousness  arises  to  bewilder  and  deflect 
the  essor  towards  life.  Just  when  convention 
seemed  to  be  on  the  run,  and  youth  seemed  to  be 
facing  a  sane  and  candid  attitude  towards  sex,  we 
find  idealistic  girls  and  men  coming  out  of  the 
colleges  to  tell  us  of  our  social  responsibility  to 
the  race.  This  means  not  only  that  our  daily 
living  is  to  be  dampened  by  the  haunting  thought 

[177] 


of  misery  that  we  cannot  personally  prevent,  but 
that  our  thirst  towards  love-experience  is  to  be 
discouraged  and  turned  aside  into  a  concern  for 
racial  perfection.  That  is,  we  are  subtly  per 
suaded  against  merely  growing  widely  and  loving 
intensely.  We  become  vague  and  mystified 
means  toward  nebulous  and  unreal  ends.  This 
new  puritanism  will  not  let  us  be  ends  in  our 
selves,  or  let  personality  be  the  chief  value  in  life. 
It  will  almost  let  us  sometimes.  But  it  always 
pulls  us  up  somewhere.  There  is  always  a  devil 
of  inhibition  to  interpose  before  our  clean  and 
nai've  grasping  of  life.  (You  see,  my  puritanism 
takes  the  form  of  a  suspicion  that  there  may  be  a 
personal  devil  lurking  in  the  universe.) 

This  is  why  the  puritan  always  needs  to  be 
thoroughly  explained  and  exposed.  We  must 
keep  him  before  our  eyes,  recognize  him  as  the 
real  enemy,  no  matter  in  what  ideal  disguise  he 
lurks.  We  must  learn  how  he  works,  and  what 
peculiar  satisfactions  he  gets  from  his  activity. 
For  he  must  get  satisfaction  or  he  would  not  be  so 
prevalent.  I  accept  the  dogma  that  to  explain 
anybody  we  have  to  do  little  more  than  discover 
just  what  contentment  people  are  getting  from 

[178] 


what  they  do,  or  from  what  they  are  permitting  to 
happen  to  them,  or  even  from  what  they  are  fling 
ing  their  will  into  trying  to  prevent  happening  to 
them.  For,  if  life  is  anything  positive,  it  is  the 
sense  of  control.  In  the  puritan,  of  course,  we 
have  the  paradox  how  he  can  get  satisfaction  from 
ruggedly  aud  sternly  subjecting  himself  and  re 
nouncing  the  world,  the  flesh  and  .the  devil. 
There  is  a  }  mlar  superstition  that  the  puritan 
has  an  extra  endowment  of  moral  force,  that  he 
reverses  the  natural  current  of  life,  that  he  resists 
the  drag  of  carnality  down  towards  hell,  that  his 
energy  is  thrown  centra-satisfaction,  that  this  con 
trol  is  a  real  straddling  of  the  nefarious  way. 
But,  of  course,  it  is  just  this  superstition  that  gives 
the  puritan  his  terrific  prestige.  In  the  light  of 
the  will-to-power  dogma  this  superstition  fades. 
The  puritan  becomes  just  as  much  of  a  naturalistic 
phenomenon  as  the  most  carnal  sinner.  Instincts 
and  impulses,  in  the  puritan,  are  not  miraculously 
cancelled,  but  have  their  full  play.  The  primitive 
currents  of  life  are  not  blocked  and  turned  back 
on  their  sources,  but  turned  into  powerful  and 
usually  devastating  channels.  The  puritan  is 
just  as  much  of  a  "natural"  man  as  you  or  I. 


But  we  still  have  to  explain  how  this  lustful, 
headstrong  creature  called  man,  spilling  with 
greed,  could  so  unabatedly  throughout  the  ages 
give  up  the  primitive  satisfaction  of  sex  and  food 
and  drink  and  gregariousness  and  act  the  ascetic 
and  the  glumly  censorious.  How  could  an  animal 
whose  business  was  to  feel  powerful  get  power 
from  being  in  subjection  and  deprivation?  Well, 
the  puritan  gets  his  sense  of  power  from  a  very 
cunningly  organized  satisfaction  of  two  of  his 
strongest  impulses, — the  self-conscious  personal 
impulses  of  being  regarded  and  being  neglected. 
The  puritan  is  no  thwarted  and  depleted  person. 
On  the  contrary,  he  is  rather  a  complete  person, 
getting  almost  the  maximum  of  satisfaction  out  of 
these  two  apparently  contradictory  sentiments, — 
the  self-regarding  and  self-abasing.  The  pure 
autocrat  would  feed  himself  wholly  on  the  first, 
the  pure  slave  would  be  only  a  human  embodiment 
of  the  second.  But  the  pure  puritan  manages  to 
make  the  most  powerful  amalgam  of  both. 

What  we  may  call  the  puritan  process  starts 
with  the  satisfaction  of  the  impulse  for  self- 
abasement  (an  impulse  as  primitive  as  any,  for  in 
the  long  struggle  for  survival  it  was  often  just  as 

[180] 


necessary  for  life  to  cower  as  it  was  to  fight).  It 
is  only  the  puritan's  prestige  that  has  attached 
moral  value  to  self-sacrifice,  for  there  is  nothing 
intrinsic  in  it  that  makes  it  any  more  praiseworthy 
than  lust.  But  its  pragmatic  value  is  immense. 
When  the  puritan  announces  himself  as  the  least 
worthy  of  men,  he  not  only  predisposes  in  his 
favor  the  naturally  slavish  people  around  him,  but 
he  neutralizes  the  aggressive  and  self- regarding 
who  would  otherwise  be  moved  to  suppress  him. 
He  renounces,  he  puts  on  meekness,  he  sternly 
regiments  himself,  he  makes  himself  unhappy  in 
ways  that  are  just  not  quite  severe  enough  to  ex 
cite  pity  and  yet  run  no  risk  of  arousing  any 
envy.  If  the  puritan  does  all  this  unconsciously, 
the  effect  is  yet  the  same  as  if  he  were  deliberately 
plotting.  To  give  his  impulses  of  self-abasement 
full  play,  he  must,  of  course,  exercise  a  certain 
degree  of  control.  This  control,  however,  gives 
him  little  of  that  sense  of  power  that  makes  for 
happiness.  Puritan  moralists  have  always  tried 
to  make  us  believe  in  this  virtue  of  self-control. 
They  forget  to  point  out,  however,  that  it  does 
not  become  a  virtue  until  it  has  become  idealized. 
Control  over  self  gives  us  little  sense  of  control. 

[181] 


It  is  the  dreariest  of  all  satisfactions  of  the  will 
to  power.  Not  until  we  become  proud  of  our 
self-control  do  we  get  satisfaction.  The  puritan 
only  begins  to  reap  his  satisfaction  when  the  self- 
regarding  impulse  comes  into  play. 

Having  given  his  self-abasing  impulse  free  rein, 
he  is  now  in  a  position  to  exploit  his  self-regard. 
He  has  made  himself  right  with  the  weak  and 
slavish.  He  has  fortified  himself  with  their  alli 
ance.  He  now  satisfies  his  self-regard  by  becom 
ing  proud  of  his  humility  and  enjoining  it  on 
others.  If  it  were  self-control  ak»ne  that  made 
the  puritan,  he  would  not  be  as  powerful  as  he  is. 
Indeed  he  would  be  no  more  than  the  mild  ascetic, 
who  is  all  abnegation  because  his  self -regarding 
mechanism  is  weak.  But  in  the  puritan  both  im 
pulses  are  strong.  It  is  control  over  others  that 
yields  him  his  satisfactions  of  power.  He  may 
stamp  out  his  sex-desire,  but  his  impulse  to  shatter 
ideas  that  he  does  not  like  will  flourish  wild  and 
wanton.  To  the  true  puritan  the  beauty  of  un 
selfishness  lies  in  his  being  able  to  enforce  it  on 

others.     He  loves  virtue  not  so  much  for  its  own 
I 

!   sake  as  for  its  being  an  instrument  of  his  terrorism. 
The  true  puritan  is  at  once  the  most  unselfish 

[182] 


and  the  most  self-righteous  of  men.  There  is 
nothing  he  will  not  do  for  you,  give  up  for  you, 
suffer  for  you.  But  at  the  same  time  there  is  no 
cranny  of  your  world  that  he  will  not  illuminate 
with  the  virtue  of  this  doing  of  his.  His  real 
satisfaction  comes  not  from  his  action  of  benevo 
lence  but  from  the  moral  of  the  tale.  He  need 
not  boast  about  his  renunciation  or  his  altruism. 
But  in  any  true  puritan  atmosphere  that  pride  will 
be  prevalent.  Indeed,  it  is  the  oxygen  of  that 
atmosphere.  Wherever  you  come  across  that 
combination  of  selfless  devotion  with  self-right 
eousness,  you  have  the  essence  of  the  puritan. 
Should  you  come  across  the  one  without  the  other 
you  would  find  not  the  puritan  but  the  saint. 

The  puritan  then  gets  the  satisfaction  of  his 
will  to  power  through  the  turning  of  his  self- 
abasement  into  purposes  of  self-regard.  Re-  . 
nunciation  is  the  raw  material  for  his  positive 
sense  of  power.  The  puritan  gets  his  satisfaction 
exactly  where  the  most  carnal  of  natural  men  gets 
his,  out  of  the  stimulation  of  his  pride.  And  in  a 
world  where  renunciation  has  to  happen  to  us 
whether  we  want  it  or  not,  the  puritan  is  in  the 
most  impressive  strategic  position.  In  economy 


of  energy  he  has  it  all  over  the  head  that  is  bloody 
but  unbowed.  For  the  puritan  is  so  efficient 
morally  that  he  can  bow  his  head  and  yet  exact 
control  both  out  of  the  bowing  and  out  of  the 
prestige  which  his  bowing  gives  him,  as  well  as 
out  of  the  bowing  which  he  can  enforce  on  others. 
The  true  puritan  must  become  an  evangelist.  It 
is  not  enough  to  renounce  the  stimulus  to  satis 
faction  which  is  technically  known  as  a  "tempta 
tion."  The  renouncing  must  be  made  into  an 
ideal,  the  ideal  must  be  codified,  promulgated, 
and,  in  the  last  analysis,  enforced.  •  In  the  com 
pelling  of  others  to  abstain,  you  have  the  final 
glut  of  puritanical  power.  For  in  getting  other 
people  to  renounce  a  thing  you  thereby  get  re 
newed  justification  for  your  own  renouncing. 
And  so  the  puritan  may  go  on  inexhaustibly  roll 
ing  up  his  satisfactions,  one  impulse  reinforcing 
the  other.  The  simultaneous  play  of  these  two 
apparently  inconsistent  personal  impulses  makes 
the  puritan  type  one  of  the  stablest  in  society. 
While  the  rest  of  us  are  longing  for  power  the 
puritan  is  enjoying  his.  And  because  the  puritan 
is  so  well  integrated  he  almost  always  rules.  The 


person  whose  satisfactions  of  control  are  more 
various  and  more  refined  is  on  the  defensive 
against  him. 

The  puritan  gets  his  sense  of  power  not  in  the 
harmless  way  of  the  artist  or  the  philosopher  or 
the  lover  or  the  scientist,  but  in  a  crude  assault  on 
that  most  vulnerable  part  of  other  people's  souls, 
their  moral  sense.  He  is  far  more  dangerous  to 
those  he  converts  than  to  those  he  intimidates. 
For  he  first  scares  them  into  abandoning  the  rich 
and  sensuous  and  expressive  impulses  in  life,  and 
then  teaches  them  to  be  proud  of  having  done 
so.  We  all  have  the  potentiality  of  the  puritan 
within  us.  I  remember  suffering  agonies  at  the 
age  of  ten  because  my  aunt  used  to  bring  me 
candy  that  had  been  wickedly  purchased  on  the 
Sabbath  day.  I  forget  whether  I  ate  it  or  not, 
but  that  fact  is  irrelevant.  What  counted  was 
the  guilt  with  which  the  whole  universe  seemed  to 
be  stained.  I  need  no  other  evidence  of  the  irra 
tional  nature  of  morality  than  this  fact  that  chil 
dren  can  be  such  dogged  little  puritans,  can  be  at 
the  age  of  ten  so  sternly  and  intuitively  righteous. 

The  puritan  is  a  case  of  arrested  development. 


Most  of  us  do  grow  beyond  him  and  find  subtler 
ways  of  satisfying  our  desire  for  power.  And  we 
do  it  because  we  never  can  quite  take  that  step 
from  self-abasement  to  self-regard.  We  never 
can  quite  become  proud  of  our  humility.  Re 
nunciation  remains  an  actual  going  without,  sacri 
fice  a  real  thwarting.  If  we  value  an  experience 
and  deliberately  surrender  it,  we  are  too  naive  to 
pretend  that  there  are  compensations.  There  is  a 
loss.  We  are  left  with  a  vacuum.  There  is  only 
depression  and  loss  of  control.  Our  self-regard 
is  not  quite  elemental  enough  to  get  stimulation 
from  wielding  virtue  over  others.  I  never  feel  so 
degraded  as  when  I  have  renounced.  I  had 
rather  beat  my  head  rhythmically  and  endlessly 
against  an  unyielding  wall.  For  the  pagan  often 
breaks  miraculously  through  the  wall.  But  the 
puritan  at  his  best  can  only  strut  outside. 

Most  of  us,  therefore,  after  we  have  had  our 
puritan  fling,  sown  our  puritan  wild  oats  as  it 
were,  grow  up  into  devout  and  progressing  pagans, 
cultivating  the  warmth  of  the  sun,  the  delicious- 
ness  of  love-experience,  the  high  moods  of  art. 
The  puritans  remain  around  us,  a  danger  and  a 
threat.  But  they  have  value  to  us  in  keeping  us 

[186] 


acutely  self-conscious  of  our  faith.  They  whet 
our  ardor.  Perhaps  no  one  can  be  really  a  good 
appreciating  pagan  who  has  not  once  been  a  bad 
puritan. 


1 187 1 


THE  IMMANENCE  OF  DOSTOEVSKY 

IT  is  impossible  not  to  think  of  Dostoevsky  as  a 
living  author  when  his  books  come  regularly,  as 
they  are  coming,  to  the  American  public  every  few 
months.  Our  grandfathers  sixty  years  ago  are 
said  to  have  lived  their  imaginative  lives  in  an 
ticipation  of  the  next  instalment  of  Dickens  or 
Thackeray.  I  can  feel  somewhat  of  the  same  ex 
citement  in  this  Dostoevsky  stream,  though  I  can 
not  pretend  that  the  great  Russian  will  ever  be 
come  a  popular  American  classic.  Yet  in  the 
progress  from  Dickens  to  Dostoevsky  there  is  a 
symbol  of  the  widening  and  deepening  of  the 
American  imagination.  We  are  adrift  on  a  far 
wider  sea  than  our  forefathers.  We  are  far  more 
adventurous  in  personal  relations,  far  more  aware 
of  the  bewildering  variousness  of  human  nature. 
If  you  have  once  warmed  to  Dostoevsky,  you  can 
never  go  back  to  the  older  classic  fiction  on  which 
we  were  brought  up.  The  lack  of  nuance,  the 

[188] 


hideous  normality  of  its  people  begin  to  depress 
you.  When  once  you  have  a  sense  of  the  illusion 
of  "character,"  when  once  you  have  felt  the 
sinister,  irrational  turn  of  human  thoughts,  and 
the  subtle  interplay  of  impression  and  desire,  and 
the  crude  impingement  of  circumstance,  you  find 
yourself — unless  you  keep  conscious  watch — feel 
ing  a  shade  of  contempt  for  the  Scott  and  Balzac 
and  Dickens  and  Thackeray  and  Trollope  who 
were  the  authoritative  showmen  of  life  for  our 
middle-class  relatives.  You  relegate  such  fiction 
to  the  level  of  "movie"  art,  with  its  clean,  pigeon 
holed  categories  of  the  emotions,  and  its  "register 
ing"  of  a  few  simple  moods. 

You  will,  of  course,  be  wrong  in  any  such  con 
tempt,  because  these  novelists  show  a  bewildering 
variety  of  types  and  a  deep  intuition  of  the  major 
movements  of  the  soul.  Dickens  teems  with  irra 
tional  creatures,  with  unconventional  levels  of 
life.  But  you  can  scarcely  contradict  me  when  I 
say  that  neither  Dickens  nor  his  readers  ever  for 
got  that  these  human  patterns  were  queer.  His 
appeal  lies  exactly  in  the  joyful  irrelevance  with 
which  we  take  all  these  lapses  from  the  norm,  in 
the  pitiful  tears  which  we  .can  shed  for  human 


beings  done  so  obviously  as  they  should  not  be 
done  by.  In  reading  these  familiar  novelists  we 
never  lose  our  moral  landmarks.  No  matter  how 
great  the  deviations  a  character  shows,  we  are  al 
ways  conscious — or  could  be  conscious  if  we  liked 
— of  the  exact  amount  of  that  deviation.  The 
charm  of  that  nineteenth-century  fiction,  as  in  the 
work  of  belated  Victorians  like  Mr.  Chesterton, 
lies  in  that  duality  between  the  sane  and  the  in 
sane,  the  virtuous  and  the  villainous,  the  sober  and 
the  mischievous,  the  responsible  and  the  irrespon 
sible.  There  is  no  falsification  in  this.  These 
novelists  were  writing  for  an  epoch  that  really  had 
stable  "character,"  standards,  morals,  that  consist 
ently  saw  the  world  in  a  duality  of  body  and 
spirit.  They  were  a  reflection  of  a  class  that 
really  had  reticences,  altruisms,  and  religious 
codes. 

Dostoevsky  appeals  to  us  to-day  because  we  are 
trying  to  close  up  that  dualism.  And  our  appre 
ciation  of  him  and  the  other  modern  Russians  is  a 
mark  of  how  far  we  have  actually  gone.  It  is 
still  common  to  call  this  fiction  unhealthy,  morbid, 
unwholesome.  All  that  is  meant  by  this  is  that 
the  sudden  shock  of  a  democratic,  unified,  in- 
[ 


tensely  feeling  and  living  outlook  is  so  severe  to 
the  mind  that  thinks  in  the  old  dual  terms  as  to 
be  almost  revolting.  What  becomes  more  and 
more  apparent  to  the  readers  of  Dostoevsky,  how 
ever,  is  his  superb  modern  healthiness.  He  is 
healthy  because  he  has  no  sense  of  any  dividing 
line  between  the  normal  and  the  abnormal,  or 
even  between  the  sane  and  the  insane.  I  call  this 
healthy  because  it  is  so  particularly  salutary  for 
our  American  imagination  to  be  jolted  out  of  its 
stiltedness  and  preconceived  notions  of  human 
psychology.  I  admit  that  the  shock  is  somewhat 
rough  and  rude.  "The  Idiot",  which  I  have  read 
only  once,  remains  in  my  mind  as  a  stream  of 
fairly  incomprehensible  people  and  unintelligible 
emotional  changes.  Yet  I  feel  that  when  I  read 
it  again  I  shall  understand  it.  For  Dostoevsky 
has  a  strange,  intimate  power  which  breaks  in 
your  neat  walls  and  shows  you  how  much  more 
subtle  and  inconsequent  your  flowing  life  is  than 
even  your  introspection  had  thought.  But  for  all 
his  subtlety  he  is  the  reverse  of  anything  morbidly 
introspective.  In  his  work  you  get  the  full  warm 
unity  of  emotional  life  without  losing  any  of  the 
detail  of  the  understanding  analysis  of  the  soul. 

[191] 


This  astounding  mergence  Dostoevsky  actually 
seems  to  achieve.  That  is  what  gives  him  the 
intimate  power  which  distinguishes  every  story  of 
his  from  anything  else  you  have  ever  read.  Again 
he  contrasts  with  the  classical  novelists.  For  they 
are  quite  palpably  outside  their  subjects.  You 
are  never  unaware  of  the  author  as  telling  the 
story.  He  has  always  the  air  of  the  showman, 
unrolling  his  drama  before  your  eyes.  His  char 
acters  may  be  infinitely  warm  and  human,  but  the 
writer  himself  is  somehow  not  in  them. 
"Wuthering  Heights"  is  the  only  English  story  I 
think  of  that  has  something  of  the  fierce,  absorbed 
intensity  of  Dostoevsky.  In  the  great  Russian 
you  lose  all  sense  of  the  showman.  The  writer  is 
himself  the  story;  he  is  inextricably  in  it.  In 
narratives  like  'The  Double"  or  "A  Gentle 
Spirit"  immanence  could  go  no  further.  The 
story  seems  to  tell  itself.  Its  strange,  breathless 
intimacy  of  mood  follows  faithfully  every  turn 
and  quirk  of  thought  and  feeling.  Its  tempo  is 
just  of  that  inner  life  we  know,  with  its  ceaseless 
boring  into  the  anxious  future  and  its  trails  of  the 
unresolved  past.  These  stories  follow  just  that 
[192] 


fluctuating  line  of  our  conscious  life  with  its  de 
pressions  and  satisfactions,  its  striving  always  for 
a  sense  of  control,  its  uneasiness.  In  Dostoevsky's 
novels  it  is  not  only  the  author  that  is  immanent. 
The  reader  also  is  absorbed.  After  reading 
"Crime  and  Punishment"  you  are  yourself  the 
murderer.  For  days  the  odor  of  guilt  follows  you 
around.  The  extravaganza  of  "The  Double" 
pursues  you  like  a  vivid  dream  of  your  own. 

Such  stories,  however  fantastic  the  problems  of 
the  soul,  get  deeply  into  us.  We  cannot  ignore  ' 
them,  we  cannot  take  them  irresponsibly.  We 
cannot  read  them  for  amusement,  or  even  in  de 
tachment,  as  we  can  our  classics.  We  forget  our 
categories,  our  standards,  our  notions  of  human 
nature.  All  we  feel  is  that  we  are  tracing  the 
current  of  life  itself.  Dostoevsky  is  so  much  in 
his  stories  that  we  get  no  sense  of  his  attitude 
toward  his  characters  or  of  his  criticism  of  life. 
Yet  the  after-impression  is  one  of  rich  kindness, 
bom  of  suffering  and  imperfection,  and  of  a  truly 
religious  reverence  for  all  living  experience. 
Man  as  a  being  with  his  feet  in  the  mud  and  his 
gaze  turned  toward  the  stars,  yet  always  indis- 
[193] 


solubly  one  in  feet  and  eyes  and  heart  and  brain ! 
If  we  are  strong  enough  to  hear  him,  this  is  the 
decisive  force  we  need  on  our  American  creative 
outlook. 


[  194  1 


THE  ART  OF  THEODORE  DREISER 

THEODORE  DREISER  has  had  the  good  fortune 
to  evoke  a  peculiar  quality  of  pugnacious  interest 
among  the  younger  American  intelligentsia  such 
as  has  been  the  lot  of  almost  nobody  else  writing 
to-day  unless  it  be  Miss  Amy  Lowell.  We  do 
not  usually  take  literature  seriously  enough  to 
quarrel  over  it.  Or  else  we  take  it  so  seriously 
that  we  urbanely  avoid  squabbles.  Certainly 
there  are  none  of  the  vendettas  that  rage  in  a 
culture  like  that  of  France.  But  Mr.  Dreiser 
seems  to  have  made  himself,  particularly  since  the 
suppression  of  "The  Genius,"  a  veritable  issue. 
Interesting  and  surprising  are  the  reactions  to  him. 
Edgar  Lee  Masters  makes  him  a  "soul-enrapt 
demi-urge,  walking  the  earth,  stalking  life"; 
Harris  Merton  Lyon  saw  in  him  a  "seer  of  in 
scrutable  mien";  Arthur  Davison  Ficke  sees  him 
as  master  of  a  passing  throng  of  figures,  "labored 
with  immortal  illusion,  the  terrible  and  beautiful, 

[195] 


cruel  and  wonder-laden  illusion  of  life";  Mr. 
Powys  makes  him  an  epic  philosopher  of  the 
"life-tide";  H.  L.  Mencken  puts  him  ahead  of 
Conrad,  with  "an  agnosticism  that  has  almost 
passed  beyond  curiosity."  On  the  other  hand,  an 
unhappy  critic  in  The  Nation  last  year  gave 
Mr.  Dreiser  his  place  for  all  time  in  a  neat 
antithesis  between  the  realism  that  was  based  on  a 
theory  of  human  conduct  and  the  naturalism  that 
reduced  life  to  a  mere  animal  behavior.  For 
Dreiser  this  last  special  hell  was  reserved,  and  the 
jungle-like  and  simian  activities  of  his  characters 
were  rather  exhaustively  outlined.  At  the  time 
this  antithesis  looked  silly.  With  the  appearance 
of  Mr.  Dreiser's  latest  book,  "A  Hoosier  Holi 
day,"  it  becomes  nonsensical.  For  that  wise  and 
delightful  book  reveals  him  as  a  very  human  critic 
of  very  common  human  life,  romantically  sensual 
and  poetically  realistic,  with  an  artist's  vision  and 
a  thick,  warm  feeling  for  American  life. 

This  book  gives  the  clue  to  Mr.  Dreiser,  to  his 
insatiable  curiosity  about  people,  about  their 
sexual  inclinations,  about  their  dreams,  about 
the  homely  qualities  that  make  them  Ameri 
can.  His  memories  give  a  picture  of  the  floun- 

[196] 


dering  young  American  that  is  so  typical  as 
to  be  almost  epic.  No  one  has  ever  pictured  this 
lower  middle-class  American  life  so  winningly,  be 
cause  no  one  has  had  the  necessary  literary  skill 
with  the  lack  of  self-consciousness.  Mr.  Dreisei 
is  often  sentimental,  but  it  is  a  sentimentality  that 
captivates  you  with  its  candor.  You  are  seeing 
this  vacuous,  wistful,  spiritually  rootless,  Middle- 
Western  life  through  the  eyes  of  a  nai've  but  very 
wise  boy.  Mr.  Dreiser  seems  queer  only  because 
he  has  carried  along  his  youthful  attitude  in  un 
broken  continuity.  He  is  fascinated  with  sex  be 
cause  youth  is  usually  obsessed  with  sex.  He 
puzzles  about  the  universe  because  youth  usually 
puzzles.  He  thrills  to  crudity  and  violence  be 
cause  sensitive  youth  usually  recoils  from  the 
savagery  of  the  industrial  world.  Imagine  in 
corrigible,  sensuous  youth  endowed  with  the 
brooding  skepticism  of  the  philosopher  who  feels 
the  vanity  of  life,  and  you  have  the  paradox  of 
Mr.  Dreiser.  For  these  two  attitudes  in  him  sup 
port  rather  than  oppose  each  other.  His  spiritual 
evolution  was  out  of  a  pious,  ascetic  atmosphere 
into  intellectual  and  personal  freedom.  He  seems 
to  have  found  himself  without  losing  himself. 

[197] 


Of  how  many  American  writers  can  this  be  said*? 
And  for  this  much  shall  be  forgiven  him, — his 
slovenliness  of  style,  his  lack  of  nuances^  his 
apathy  to  the  finer  shades  of  beauty,  his  weakness 
for  the  mystical  and  the  vague.  Mr.  Dreiser  sug 
gests  the  over-sensitive  temperament  that  protects 
itself  by  an  admiration  for  crudity  and  cruelty. 
His  latest  book  reveals  the  boyhood  shyness  and 
timidity  of  this  Don  Juan  of  novelists.  Mr. 
Dreiser  is  complicated,  but  he  is  complicated  in  a 
very  understandable  American  way,  the  product 
of  the  uncouth  forces  of  small-town  life  and  the 
vast  disorganization  of  the  wider  American 
world.  As  he  reveals  himself,  it  is  a  revelation 
of  a  certain  broad  level  of  the  American  soul. 

Mr.  Dreiser  seems  uncommon  only  because  he 
is  more  naive  than  most  of  us.  It  is  not  so  much 
that  his  pages  swarm  with  sexful  figures  as 
that  he  rescues  sex  for  the  scheme  of  personal  life. 
He  feels  a  holy  mission  to  slay  the  American 
literary  superstition  that  men  and  women  are  not 
sensual  beings.  But  he  does  not  brush  this  fact 
in  the  sniggering  way  of  the  popular  magazines. 
He  takes  it  very  seriously,  so  much  so  that  some 
of  his  novels  become  caricatures  of  desire.  It  is, 

[198] 


however,  a  misfortune  that  it  has  been  Brieux 
and  Freud  and  not  native  Theodore  Dreiser  who 
has  saturated  the  sexual  imagination  of  the 
younger  American  intelligentsia.  It  would  have 
been  far  healthier  to  absorb  Mr.  Dreiser's  literary 
treatment  of  sex  than  to  go  hysterical  over  its 
pathology.  Sex  has  little  significance  unless  it  is 
treated  in  personally  artistic,  novel istic  terms. 
The  American  tradition  had  tabooed  the  treat 
ment  of  those  infinite  gradations  and  complexities 
of  love  that  fill  the  literary  imagination  of  a  sensi 
tive  people.  When  curiosity  became  too  strong 
and  reticence  was  repealed  in  America,  we  had  no 
means  of  articulating  ourselves  except  in  a  de 
plorable  pseudo-scientific  jargon  that  has  no  more 
to  do  with  the  relevance  of  sex  than  the  chemical 
composition  of  orange  paint  has  to  do  with  the 
artist's  vision.  Dreiser  has  done  a  real  service  to 
the  American  imagination  in  despising  the  under 
world  and  going  gravely  to  the  business  of  pic 
turing  sex  as  it  is  lived  in  the  personal  relations  of 
bungling,  wistful,  or  masterful  men  and  women. 
He  seemed  strange  and  rowdy  only  because  he 
made  sex  human,  and  American  tradition  had 
never  made  it  human.  It  had  only  made  it  either 
[  199  ] 


sacred  or  vulgar,  and  when  these  categories  no 
longer  worked,  we  fell  under  the  dubious  and  per 
verting  magic  of  the  psycho-analysts. 

In  spite  of  his  looseness  of  literary  gait  and 
heaviness  of  style  Dreiser  seems  a  sincere  groper 
after  beauty.  It  is  natural  enough  that  this 
should  so  largely  be  the  beauty  of  sex.  For 
where  would  a  sensitive  boy,  brought  up  in  In 
diana  and  in  the  big  American  cities,  get  beauty 
expressed  for  him  except  in  women  *?  What  does 
Mid- Western  America  offer  to  the  starving  except 
its  personal  beauty*?  A  few  landscapes,  an  occa 
sional  picture  in  a  museum,  a  book  of  verse  per 
haps  !  Would  not  all  the  rest  be  one  long,  flaunt 
ing  offense  of  ugliness  and  depression^  "The 
'Genius,'  "  instead  of  being  that  mass  of  porno 
graphic  horror  which  the  Vice  Societies  repute  it 
to  be,  is  the  story  of  a  groping  artist  whose  love 
of  beauty  runs  obsessingly  upon  the  charm  of  girl 
hood.  Through  different  social  planes,  through 
business  and  manual  labor  and  the  feverish  world 
of  artists,  he  pursues  this  lure.  Dreiser  is  re 
freshing  in  his  air  of  the  moral  democrat,  who 
sees  life  impassively,  neither  praising  nor  blaming, 
at  the  same  time  that  he  realizes  how  much  more 

[200] 


terrible  and  beautiful  and  incalculable  life  is  than 
any  of  us  are  willing  to  admit.  It  may  be  all 
apologia,  but  it  comes  with  the  grave  air  of  a  mind 
that  wants  us  to  understand  just  how  it  all  hap 
pened.  "Sister  Carrie"  will  always  retain  the 
fresh  charm  of  a  spontaneous  working-out  of 
mediocre,  and  yet  elemental  and  significant,  lives. 
A  good  novelist  catches  hold  of  the  thread  of 
human  desire.  Dreiser  does  this,  and  that  is  why 
his  admirers  forgive  him  so  many  faults. 

If  you  like  to  speculate  about  personal  and 
literary  qualities  that  are  specifically  American, 
Dreiser  should  be  as  interesting  as  any  one  now 
writing  in  America.  This  becomes  clearer  as  he 
writes  more  about  his  youth.  His  hopelessly  un- 
orientated,  half-educated  boyhood  is  so  typical 
of  the  uncritical  and  careless  society  in  which  wist 
ful  American  talent  has  had  to  grope.  He  had 
to  be  spiritually  a  self-made  man,  work  out  a 
philosophy  of  life,  discover  his  own  sincerity. 
Talent  in  America  outside  of  the  ruling  class  flow 
ers  very  late,  because  it  takes  so  long  to  find  its 
bearings.  It  has  had  almost  to  create  its  own  soil, 
before  it  could  put  in  its  roots  and  grow.  It  is 
born  shivering  into  an  inhospitable  and  irrelevant 

[201] 


group.  It  has  to  find  its  own  kind  of  people  and 
piece  together  its  links  of  comprehension.  It  is  a 
gruelling  and  tedious  task,  but  those  who  come 
through  it  contribute,  like  Vachel  Lindsay,  crea 
tive  work  that  is  both  novel  and  indigenous.  The 
process  can  be  more  easily  traced  in  Dreiser  than 
in  almost  anybody  else.  "A  Hoosier  Holiday" 
not  only  traces  the  personal  process,  but  it  gives 
the  social  background.  The  common  life,  as  seen 
throughout  the  countryside,  is  touched  off  quizzi 
cally,  and  yet  sympathetically,  with  an  artist's 
vision.  Dreiser  sees  the  American  masses  in  their 
commonness  and  at  their  pleasure  as  brisk,  rather 
vacuous  people,  a  little  pathetic  in  their  innocence 
of  the  possibilities  of  life  and  their  optimistic 
trustfulness.  He  see  them  ruled  by  great  barons 
of  industry,  and  yet  unconscious  of  their  serfdom. 
He  seems  to  love  this  countryside,  and  he  makes 
you  love  it. 

Dreiser  loves,  too,  the  ugly  violent  bursts  of 
American  industry, — the  flaming  steel-mills  and 
gaunt  lakesides.  "The  Titan"  and  "The  Finan 
cier"  are  unattractive  novels,  but  they  are  human 
documents  of  the  brawn  of  a  passing  American 
era.  Those  stenographic  conversations,  webs  of 

[202] 


financial  intrigue,  bare  bones  of  enterprise,  insult 
our  artistic  sense.  There  is  too  much  raw  beef, 
and  yet  it  all  has  the  taste  and  smell  of  the  primi 
tive  business-jungle  it  deals  with.  These  crude 
and  greedy  captains  of  finance  with  their  wars  and 
their  amours  had  to  be  given  some  kind  of  literary 
embodiment,  and  Dreiser  has  hammered  a  sort  of 
raw  epic  out  of  their  lives. 

It  is  not  only  his  feeling  for  these  themes  of 
crude  power  and  sex  and  the  American  common 
life  that  makes  Dreiser  interesting.  His  emphases 
are  those  of  a  new  America  which  is  latently  ex 
pressive  and  which  must  develop  its  art  before  we 
shall  really  have  become  articulate.  For  Dreiser 
is  a  true  hyphenate,  a  product  of  that  conglo 
merate  Americanism  that  springs  from  other  roots 
than  the  English  tradition.  Do  we  realize  how 
rare  it  is  to  find  a  talent  that  is  thoroughly 
American  and  wholly  un-English?  Culturally 
we  have  somehow  suppressed  the  hyphenate. 
Only  recently  has  he  forced  his  way  through  the 
unofficial  literary  censorship.  The  vers-librists 
teem  with  him,  but  Dreiser  is  almost  the  first  to 
achieve  a  largeness  of  utterance.  His  outlook,  it 
is  true,  flouts  the  American  canons  of  optimism 
[203] 


and  redemption,  but  these  were  never  anything 
but  conventions.  There  stirs  in  Dreiser's  books  a 
new  American  quality.  It  is  not  at  all  German. 
It  is  an  authentic  attempt  to  make  something 
artistic  out  of  the  chaotic  materials  that  lie 
around  us  in  American  life.  '  Dreiser  interests  be 
cause  we  can  watch  him  grope  and  feel  his  clumsi 
ness.  He  has  the  artist's  vision  without  the  sure- 
ness  of  the  artist's  technique.  That  is  one  of  the 
tragedies  of  America.  But  his  faults  are  those  of 
his  material  and  of  uncouth  bulk,  and  not  of  shod- 
diness.  He  expresses  an  America  that  is  in  pro 
cess  of  forming.  The  interest  he  evokes  is  part  of 
the  eager  interest  we  feel  in  that  growth. 


I  204  ] 


THE  USES  OF  INFALLIBILITY 

FEW  people  read  Newman  to-day.  The  old 
anxious  issues  have  been  drowned  in  a  flood  of 
social  problems,  and  that  world  of  liberal  prog 
ress  which  to  him  was  the  enemy  at  the  gates  has 
long  ago  broken  in  and  carried  everything  before 
it.  Newman's  persuasive  voice  sounds  thin  and 
remote,  and  his  ideas  smell  of  a  musty  age.  Yet 
that  title  of  his,  Apologia  Pro  Vita  Sua,  always 
intrigues  one  with  its  modern  and  subjective 
sound.  It  is  so  much  what  all  of  us  are  itching 
to  write.  Its  egotism  brushes  with  a  faint  irony 
that  absorption  in  the  righteousness  most  emphati 
cally  not  ourselves  with  which  Newman's  life  was 
mingled.  In  that  call  upon  him  to  interpret  his 
life,  one  feels  an  unquenchable  ego  which  carries 
him  over  to  these  shameless  and  self-centred  times. 
Fortunately  placed  for  a  week  in  a  theological 
household,  I  plunged  into  the  slightly  forbidding 
pages  of  the  wistful  cardinal.  What  I  found 

[205] 


in  him  must  be  very  different  from  what  he  found 
in  himself  or  what  anybody  else  found  in  him  at 
the  time.  Newman  in  1917  suggests  less  a  re 
actionary  theology  than  a  subtle  and  secret  sym 
pathy  with  certain  veins  of  our  modern  intel 
lectual  radicalism.  The  voice  was  faint,  but 
what  I  heard  made  Newman  significant  for  me. 
For  it  implied  that  if  faith  is  eternal,  so  is  skep 
ticism,  and  that  even  in  the  most  pious  mind  may 
be  found  the  healthy  poison  of  doubt. 

Superficially  seen,  Newman  appeared  to  have 
abolished  doubt.  His  faith  was  more  conserva 
tive  than  that  of  the  orthodox.  He  surrendered 
all  that  Victorian  life  for  the  narrowest  of  ob 
scurantisms.  The  reasons  he  found  for  his  course 
only  riveted  him  impregnably  to  the  rock  of  un 
reason.  What  my  mind  fastened  on,  however, 
was  the  emotional  impulse  that  led  him  his  tor 
tuous  way.  One  detected  there  in  him  that  same 
sinister  note  one  feels  in  Pascal.  It  is  a  reason 
ableness  that  eats  away  at  belief  until  it  finally  de 
stroys  either  it  or  you.  It  is  an  uncanny  honesty 
of  soul  which,  struggling  utterly  for  faith,  saves 
it  only  by  unconsciously  losing  it.  For  if  you 
win  your  way  through  to  belief  by  sheer  intel- 

[206} 


lectual  force,  you  run  the  risk  of  over-reaching 
your  belief.  You  do  not  know  that  you  have 
passed  it,  but  you  have  really  dispensed  with  its 
use.  If  you  are  honest  in  mind  and  religious  in 
temperament,  you  find  yourself  reduced  to  the 
naked  reality  of  religion.  You  are  left  with  only 
the  most  primitive  mysticism  of  feeling.  You  are 
one  with  the  primitive  savage  group.  Ineffable 
feeling,  ecstatic  union  with  the  universe, — this  is 
your  state.  The  more  religious  you  become,  the 
more  you  tear  the  fabric  of  your  dogma.  Belief 
is  only  for  the  irreligious.  Intellectuality  in  re 
ligion,  under  the  guise  of  fortifying  faith,  only 
destroys  its  foundations.  Newman's  approach 
towards  the  certitude  of  dogma  was  really  only  an 
approach  towards  the  certitude  of  mysticism. 
When  he  thought  he  was  satisfying  his  intellectual 
doubts,  he  was  satisfying  his  emotional  cravings. 
Intending  to  buttress  dogma,  he  only  assured  for 
himself  the  mystic  state. 

How  far  he  really  attained  mysticism  is  a  fas 
cinating  problem  for  the  reader  of  the  Apologia. 
Popular  impression  is  probably  right  that  he  bore 
to  his  incredibly  lengthened  age  a  pathos  of  un 
easiness  and  sadness.  But  popular  impression  is 

[207] 


probably  wrong  in  ascribing  this  to  lingering  re 
morse  or  regret.  If  there  was  any  uncertainty,  it 
was  not  for  having  left  his  Anglican  position,  but 
for  not  having  seen  the  thing  wholly  through. 
Intellectuality  still  clung  around  him  like  a  cold 
swathing  garment.  He  probably  never  attained 
that  pure  mysticism  which  his  soul  craved.  One 
has  the  impression  that  Newman's  pathos  lay  in 
the  fact  that  he  never  quite  became  a  saint.  The 
official  world  seemed  to  hang  about  him  hamper- 
ingly.  One  wonders  sometimes  if  he  could  not 
almost  as  easily  have  become  a  wan  sweet  pagan 
as  a  saint.  The  tragedy  of  Pascal  was  that  in 
trinsically  he  was  a  pagan.  The  kind  of  Chris 
tianity  to  which  he  drove  himself  was  for  him  the 
most  virulent  form  of  moral  suicide.  The  terri 
ble  fascination  of  his  Pensces  lies  in  that  relentless 
closing  in  of  the  divine  enemy  on  his  human 
"pride,"  which  might  have  been,  with  his  intel 
lectual  genius,  so  lusty  an  organ  of  creativeness 
and  adventure.  It  was  not  disease  that  killed  him 
but  Christianity.  Pascal  is  an  eternal  warning 
from  the  perils  of  intellectual  religion. 

Dogma  did  not  kill  Newman,  but  it  did  not 
save  him.     He  was  not  a  pagan,  but  he  never  be- 

[208] 


came  a  saint.  He  never  quite  got  rid  of  dogma. 
And  that  is  what  so  fascinates  us  in  his  religious 
technique.  For  his  Apologia  is  really  a  subtle  ex 
posure  of  infallibility.  It  shows  us  what  the 
acute  intellectuality  of  a  mystic  finds  to  do  with 
dogma.  The  goal  towards  which  he  tends  is  the 
utter  bankruptcy  of  articulate  religion.  And  in 
volved  in  it  is  the  bankruptcy  of  institutional  re 
ligion.  It  is  a  religious  bankruptcy  that  acts  like 
modern  commercial  bankruptcy.  All  material 
assets  are  relinquished,  and  you  start  again  in 
business  on  the  old  footing.  You  throw  over 
your  dogma  but  keep  the  mystic  experience,  which 
can  never  be  taken  away  from  you.  In  this  way 
the  Catholic  Church  becomes,  or  could  become, 
eternal.  Newman  shows  a  way  just  short  of  re- 
linquishment.  He  uses  infallibility  to  liquidate 
his  intellectual  debts,  and  then  becomes  free  of 
his  creditors. 

ii 

How     these    attitudes     are    implied    in    the 
Apologia  I  can  only  suggest  through  the  surprises 
that  a  reading  brought.     The  contention  had  al 
ways  been  that  Newman's  apostasy  was  due  to 
[209] 


feebleness  of  will,  to  a  fatigue  in  the  search  for 
certitude  that  let  him  slip  into  the  arms  of  Mother 
Church.  My  Protestant  training  had  persistently 
represented  every  going  over  to  Rome  as  a  sur 
render  of  individual  integrity.  For  the  sake  of 
intellectual  peace,  one  became  content  to  stultify 
the  intellect  and  leave  all  thinking  to  the  infallible 
Church.  There  is  nothing  of  intellectual  fatigue, 
however,  in  Newman.  His  course  did  not  spring 
from  weariness  of  thinking.  He  had  a  most 
fluent  and  flexible  mind,  and  if  he  seemed  to  ac 
cept  beliefs  at  which  Protestants  thrilled  with 
frightened  incredulity,  it  was  because  such  an  ac 
ceptance  satisfied  some  deeper  need,  some  surer 
craving.  Read  to-day,  Newman  interests  not  be 
cause  of  the  beliefs  but  because  of  this  deeper 
desire.  He  had  a  sure  intuition  of  the  uses  of 
infallibility  and  intellectual  authority,  and  of 
their  place  in  the  scheme  of  things.  This  is  his 
significance  for  the  modern  mind.  And  he  is  the 
only  one  of  the  great  religious  writers  who  seems 
to  reach  out  to  us  and  make  contact  with  our 
modern  attitude. 

Newman  loved  dogma,  but  it  was  not  dogma 
that  he  loved  most.     It  was  not  to  quiet  a  heart 

[210] 


that  ached  with  doubt  that  he  passed  from  the 
Anglican  to  the  Roman  Church.  As  an  Anglican 
Catholic  he  was  quite  as  sure  of  his  doctrine  as 
he  was  as  a  Roman  Catholic.  His  most  primitive 
craving  was  not  so  much  for  infallibility  as  for 
legitimacy.  It  was  because  the  Roman  Church 
was  primitive,  legitimate^  authorized,  and  the 
Anglican  Church  yawned  in  spots,  that  he  made 
his  reluctant  choice.  His  Anglican  brothers 
would  not  let  him  show  them  the  catholicity  of 
the  Articles.  They  began  to  act  schismatically, 
and  there  was  nothing  to  do  but  join  the  legitimate 
order  and  leave  them  to  their  vulgar  insufficiencies. 
This  one  gets  from  the  Apologia.  But  this  crav 
ing,  one  feels,  sprang  not  from  cowardice  but  from 
a  sense  of  proportion.  Newman  was  frankly  a 
conservative.  Here  was  a  mind  that  lived  in  the 
most  exciting  of  all  intellectual  eras,  when  all  the 
acuteness  of  England  was  passing  from  orthodoxy 
to  liberalism.  Newman  deliberately  went  in  the 
other  direction.  But  he  went  because  he  valued 
certain  personal  and  spiritual  things  to  which  he 
saw  the  new  issues  would  be  either  wholly  irrele 
vant  or  fatally  confusing.  One  of  the  best  things 
in  the  Apologia  is  the  appendix  on  Liberalism, 
[211] 


where  Newman,  with  the  clarity  of  the  perfect 
enemy,  sums  up  the  new  faith.  Each  proposition 
outrages  some  aspect  of  legitimacy  which  is 
precious  to  him,  yet  his  intuition — he  wrote  it  not 
many  years  after  the  Reform  Bill — has  put  in 
classic  form  what  is  the  Nicene  Creed  of  liberal 
religion.  No  liberal  ever  expressed  liberalism  so 
justly  and  concisely.  Newman  understands  this 
modem  creed  as  perfectly  as  he  flouts  it.  So 
Pascal's  uncanny  analysis  of  human  pride  led  him 
only  to  self-prostration. 

Why  did  Newman  disdain  liberalism"?  He 
understood  it,  and  he  did  not  like  it.  His  death 
less  virtue  lies  in  his  disconcerting  honesty.  The 
air  was  full  of  strange  new  cries  that  he  saw 
would  arrest  the  Church.  She  would  have  to  ex 
plain,  defend,  interpret,  on  a  scale  far  larger  than 
had  been  done  for  centuries.  She  would  have  to 
make  adjustment  to  a  new  era.  Theology  would 
be  mingled  with  sociology.  The  church  of  the 
spirit  would  be  challenged  with  social  problems, 
would  be  called  down  into  a  battling  arena  of  life. 
Newman's  intuition  saw  that  the  challenge  of  lib 
eralism  meant  a  worried  and  harassed  Church. 
He  was  not  interested  in  social  and  political  ques- 
[212] 


tions.  The  old  order  had  a  fixed  charm  for  him. 
It  soothed  and  sustained  his  life,  and  it  was  in  his 
own  life  that  he  was  supremely  interested.  He 
loved  dogma,  but  he  loved  it  as  a  priceless  jewel 
that  one  does  not  wear.  His  emotion  was  not 
really  any  more  entangled  in  it  than  it  was  in 
social  problems.  Given  an  established  order  that 
made  his  personal  life  possible,  what  he  was  in 
terested  in  was  mystical  meditation,  the  subtle  and 
difficult  art  of  personal  relations,  and  the  exquisite 
ethical  problems  that  arise  out  of  them. 

Newman's  position  was  one  of  sublime  common- 
sense.  He  saw  that  the  Protestant  Church  would 
be  engaged  for  decades  in  the  doleful  task  of  re 
conciling  the  broadening  science  with  the  old  re 
ligious  dogma.  He  knew  that  this  was  ludicrous. 
He  saw  that  liberalism  was  incompatible  with 
dogma.  But  mostly  he  saw  that  the  new  social 
and  scientific  turn  of  men's  thinking  was  incom 
patible  with  the  mellowed  mystical  and  personal 
life  where  lay  his  true  genius.  So,  with  a  lumi 
nous  sincerity,  following  the  appeal  of  his  talents, 
he  passed  into  the  infallible  Church  which  should 
be  a  casket  for  the  riches  of  his  personal  life.  He 
was  saved  thus  from  the  sin  of  schism,  and  from 


the  sin  of  adding  to  that  hopeless  confusion  of  in 
tellectual  tongues  which  embroiled  the  English 
world  for  the  rest  of  the  century.  The  Church 
guaranteed  the  established  order  beneath  him, 
blotted  out  the  sociological  worries  around  him, 
and  removed  the  incubus  of  dogma  above  him. 
Legitimacy  and  infallibility  did  not  imprison  his 
person  or  his  mind.  On  the  contrary,  they  freed 
him,  because  they  abolished  futilities  from  his  life. 
Nothing  is  clearer  from  the  Apologia  than  New 
man's  sense  of  the  hideous  vulgarity  of  theological 
discussion.  He  uses  infallibility  to  purge  himself 
of  that  vulgarity.  He  uses  it  in  exactly  the  way 
that  it  should  rightly  be  employed.  The  com 
mon  view  is  that  dogma  is  entrusted  to  the  Church 
because  its  truth  is  of  such  momentous  import  as 
to  make  fatal  the  risk  of  error  through  private 
judgment.  The  Church  is  the  mother  who  suckles 
us  with  the  precious  milk  of  doctrine  without 
which  we  should  die.  Through  ecclesiastical  in 
fallibility  dogma  becomes  the  letter  and  spirit  of 
religion,  bony  structure  and  life-blood. 

But  Newman's  use  of  infallibility  was  as  a 
storage  vault  in  which  one  puts  priceless  securi 
ties.  They  are  there  for  service  when  one  wishes 

[214] 


to  realize  on  their  value.  But  in  the  business  of 
daily  living  one  need  not  look  at  them  from  one 
year  to  another.  Infallibility  is  the  strong  lock 
of  the  safety-vault.  It  is  a  guarantee  not  of  the 
value  of  the  wealth  but  of  its  protection.  The 
wealth  must  have  other  grounds  for  its  valuable- 
ness,  but  one  is  assured  that  it  will  not  be  tampered 
with.  By  surrendering  all  your  dogmas  to  the 
keeper-Church,  you  win,  not  certitude — for  your 
treasures  are  no  more  certain  inside  the  vault  than 
they  are  in  your  pocket — but  assurance  that  you 
will  not  have  to  see  your  life  constantly  inter 
rupted  by  the  need  of  defending  them  against 
burglars,  or  of  proving  their  genuineness  for  the 
benefit  of  inquisitive  and  incredulous  neighbors. 
The  suspicion  is  irresistible  that  Newman  craved 
infallibility  not  because  dogma  was  so  supremely 
significant  to  him,  but  because  it  was  so  supremely 
irrelevant.  Nothing  could  be  more  revealing  than 
his  acceptance  of  the  doctrine  of  the  Immaculate 
Conception.  He  has  no  trouble  whatever  in  be 
lieving  this  belated  and  hotly-disdained  dogma. 
Because  it  is  essential  to  his  understanding  of 
heaven  and  hell,  eternity  and  the  ineffable  God4? 
On  the  contrary,  because  it  is  so  quintessentially 


irrelevant  to  anything  that  really  entangles  his 
emotions.  His  tone  in  acknowledging  his  belief 
is  airy,  almost  gay.  He  seems  to  feel  no  im 
plications  in  the  belief.  It  merely  rounds  off  a 
logical  point  in  his  theology.  It  merely  expresses 
in  happy  metaphor  a  poetical  truth.  To  him 
there  is  no  tyranny  in  the  promulgation  of  this 
new  dogma.  Infallibility,  he  seems  to  suggest, 
removes  from  discussion  ideas  that  otherwise  one 
might  be  weakly  tempted  to  spend  unprofitable 
hours  arguing  about. 

And  nothing  could  be  more  seductive  than  his 
belief  in  Transubstantiation.  Science,  of  course, 
declares  this  transmutation  of  matter  impossible. 
But  science  deals  only  with  phenomena.  Tran 
substantiation  has  to  do  not  with  phenomena  but 
with  things-in-themselves.  And  what  has  science 
to  say  about  the  inner  reality  of  things'?  Science 
itself  would  be  the  first  to  disclaim  any  such  com 
petence.  Why,  therefore,  should  not  the  Church 
know  as  much  as  anybody  about  the  nature  of  this 
thing-in-itself  ?  Why  is  it  not  as  easy  to  believe 
the  Church's  testimony  as  to  the  nature  of  things 
as  it  is  to  believe  any  testmony?  Such  dogma  is 
therefore  unassailable  by  science.  And  if  it  can- 

[216] 


not  be  criticized  it  might  just  as  well  be  infallible. 
The  papal  guarantee  does  not  invade  science.  It 
merely  preempts  an  uncharted  region.  It  in 
fringes  no  intellectual  rights.  It  steps  in  merely 
to  withdraw  from  discussion  ideas  which  would 
otherwise  be  misused.  Infallibility  Newman  uses 
as  a  shelf  upon  which  to  store  away  his  glowing 
but  pragmatically  sterile  theological  ideas,  while 
down  below  in  the  arena  are  left  for  discussion 
the  interesting  aspects  of  life.  He  is  at  great 
pains  to  tell  us  that  the  Church  is  infallible  only 
in  her  expressly  declared  doctrine.  It  is  only  over 
a  few  and  definite  dogmas  that  she  presides  in 
fallibly.  You  surrender  to  infallibility  only 
those  cosmic  ideas  it  would  do  you  no  good  to  talk 
of  anyway.  In  the  vast  overflowing  world  of 
urgent  practical  life  you  are  free  to  speculate  as 
you  will.  Underneath  the  eternal  serene  of 
dogma  is  the  darting  vivid  web  of  casuistry.  Re 
lieved  of  the  inanity  of  theological  discussion,  the 
Catholic  may  use  his  intellect  on  the  human  world 
about  him.  That  is  why  we  are  apt  to  find  in  the 
Catholic  the  acute  psychologist,  while  the  Protes 
tant  remains  embroiled  in  weary  dialectics. 

Such  a  use  of  infallibility  as  Newman  implies 

[217] 


exposes  the  fallacy  of  the  Protestant  position. 
For  as  soon  as  you  have  removed  this  healthy  check 
to  theological  embroilment  you  have  opened  the 
way  to  intellectual  corruption.  As  soon  as  you 
admit  the  right  of  individual  judgment  in  theolog 
ical  matters  you  have  upset  the  balance  between 
dogma  and  life.  The  Catholic  consigns  his 
dogmas  to  the  infallible  Church  and  speculates 
about  the  pragmatic  issues  of  the  dynamic  moral 
life.  The  Protestant  on  the  other  hand,  encases 
himself  in  an  iron-bound  morality  and  gives  free 
rein  to  his  fancy  about  the  eternal  verities.  The 
Catholic  is  empirical  in  ethics  and  dogmatic  in 
theology.  The  Protestant  is  dogmatic  in  ethics 
and  more  and  more  empirical  in  theology.  He 
speculates  where  it  is  futile  to  speculate,  because 
in  supernatural  matters  you  can  never  come  by 
evidence  to  any  final,  all-convincing  truth.  But 
he  refuses  to  speculate  where  a  decent  skepticism 
and  a  changing  adjustment  to  human  nature 
would  work  out  attitudes  towards  conduct  that 
make  for  flowering  and  growth.  The  Protestant 
infallibility  of  morals  is  the  cruellest  and  least 
defensible  of  all  infallibilities.  Protestantism 

[218] 


passes  most  easily  into  that  fierce  puritan  form 
which  constrains  both  conduct  and  belief. 

The  Protestant  inevitably  gravitates  either 
towards  puritanism  or  towards  unitarianism. 
The  one  petrifies  in  a  harsh  and  narrow  moral 
code,  the  ordering  of  conduct  by  the  most  elderly, 
least  aesthetic,  dullest  and  gloomiest  elements  in 
the  community.  The  other  mingles  in  endless 
controversy  over  the  attributes  of  deity,  the  his 
tory  of  its  workings  in  the  world,  and  the  power 
of  the  supernatural.  Religion  becomes  a  village 
sewing-society,  in  which  each  member's  life  is  lived 
in  the  fearful  sight  of  all  the  others,  while  the 
tongues  clack  endlessly  about  rumors  that  can 
never  be  proved  and  that  no  one  outside  will  ever 
find  the  slightest  interest  in  having  proved. 

If  the  Catholic  Church  had  used  infallibility  in 
the  way  that  Newman  did,  its  influence  could 
never  have  been  accused  of  oppression.  There 
need  never  have  been  any  warfare  between  theol 
ogy  and  science.  Infallibility  affords  the  Church 
an  adroit  way  of  continuing  its  spiritual  existence 
while  it  permits  free  speculation  in  science  and 
ethics  to  go  on.  Suppose  the  Church  in  its  in- 

[219] 


fallibility  had  not  stuck  to  dogma.  Suppose  the 
reformers  had  been  successful,  and  the  Church  had 
accepted  early  scientific  truth.  Suppose  it  had 
refused  any  longer  to  insist  on  correctness  in 
theological  belief  but  had  insisted  on  correctness 
in  scientific  belief.  Suppose  the  dogmas  of  the 
Resurrection  had  made  way  for  the  first  crude 
imperfect  generalizations  in  physics.  Imagine 
the  hideousness  of  a  world  where  scientific  theories 
had  been  declared  infallible  by  an  all-powerful 
Church!  Our  world's  safety  lay  exactly  in  the 
Church's  rejection  of  science.  If  the  Church  had 
accepted  science,  scientific  progress  would  have 
been  impossible.  Progress  was  possible  only  by 
ignoring  the  Church.  Knowledge  about  the 
world  could  only  advance  through  accepting  grate 
fully  the  freedom  which  the  Church  tacitly  offered 
in  all  that  fallible  field  of  the  technique  of  earthly 
living.  What  progress  we  have  we  owe  not  to 
any  overcoming  or  converting  of  the  Church  but 
to  a  scrupulous  ignoring  of  her. 

In  punishing  heresy  the  Church  worked  with  a 
sound  intuition.  For  a  heretic  is  not  a  man  who 
ignores  the  Church.  He  is  one  who  tries  to  mix 
his  theology  and  science.  He  could  not  be  a 

[220] 


heretic  unless  he  were  a  victim  of  muddy  think 
ing,  and  as  a  muddy  thinker  he  is  as  much  a 
nuisance  to  secular  society  as  he  is  to  the  Church 
against  which  he  rebels.  He  is  the  officious  citi 
zen  who  tries  to  break  into  the  storage-vault  with 
the  benevolent  intention  of  showing  that  the 
jewels  are  paste.  But  all  he  usually  accomplishes 
is  to  set  the  whole  town  by  the  ears.  The  con 
structive  daily  life  of  the  citizens  is  interrupted  in 
a  flood  of  idle  gossip.  It  is  as  much  to  the  interest 
of  the  intelligent  authorities,  who  have  important 
communal  projects  on  hand,  to  suppress  him  as  it 
is  to  the  interest  of  the  owne>  of  the  jewels. 
Heresy  is  fundamentally  the  error  of  trying  to 
reconcile  new  knowledge  with  old  dogma.  The 
would-be  heretic  could  far  more  wisely  ignore 
theology  altogether  and  pursue  his  realistic  knowl 
edge  in  the  aloofness  which  it  requires.  If  there 
is  still  any  theological  taint  in  him,  he  should  not 
dabble  in  science  at  all.  If  there  is  none,  the 
Church  will  scarcely  feel  itself  threatened  and  he 
will  not  appear  as  a  heretic.  On  the  pestiferous- 
ness  of  the  heretic  both  the  Church  and  the  most 
modern  realist  can  agree.  Let  theology  deal  with 
its  world  of  dogma.  Let  science  deal  with  its 

[221] 


world  of  analysable  and  measurable  fact.  Let 
them  never  touch  hands  or  recognize  even  each 
other's  existence. 

The  intellectual  and  spiritual  chaos  of  the  nine 
teenth  century  was  due  to  the  prevalence  of  heresy 
which  raged  like  an  epidemic  through  Europe. 
Minds  which  tried  to  test  their  new  indubitable 
knowledge  by  the  presuppositions  of  faith  were 
bound  to  be  disordered  and  to  spread  disorder 
around  them.  Faith  and  science  tap  different 
planes  of  the  soul,  elicit  different  emotional  cur 
rents.  It  is  when  the  Church  has  acted  from  full 
realization  of  this  fact  that  it  has  remained  strong. 
Protestantism,  trying  to  live  in  two  worlds  at  the 
same  time,  has  swept  thousands  of  excellent 
minds  into  a  spiritual  limbo  where,  in  their  vague 
twilight  realm  of  a  modernity  which  has  not  quite 
sacrificed  theology,  they  have  ceased  to  count  for 
intellectual  or  spiritual  light. 

Perhaps  the  most  pathetic  of  heresies  is  the 
"modernism"  which  is  spreading  through  the 
French  and  Italian  Church.  For  this  effort  to 
bring  unitarian  criticism  into  Catholic  theology, 
to  make  over  the  dogmas  from  within,  to  apply 
reason  to  the  unreasonable,  is  really  the  least 
[222] 


"modern"  of  enterprises.  It  is  only  a  belated 
Protestant  reformation,  and  if  it  succeeds  it  could 
do  little  more  than  add  another  Protestant  sect  to 
the  existing  multitude.  It  would  not  in  the  least 
have  modernized  Catholicism,  for  the  most  mod 
ern  attitude  which  one  can  take  towards  the 
Church  is  to  ignore  it  entirely,  to  cease  to  feel  its 
validity  in  the  new  humane,  democratic  world 
that  is  our  vision.  In  other  words,  to  take  to 
wards  it  exactly  the  attitude  which  it  takes  to 
wards  itself.  This  is  its  strength.  It  has  never 
hesitated  to  accept  pragmatic  truth  that  was  dis 
covered  by  others.  The  Catholic  makes  use  of 
whatever  scientific,  industrial,  political,  sociolog: 
ical  development  works,  and  adjusts  himself  with 
out  discomfort  to  a  dynamic  world.  He  makes 
no  attempt  at  reconciliation  with  the  supernatural. 
A  Catholic  hospital  uses  all  the  latest  medical  sci 
ence  without  exhibiting  the  least  concern  over  its 
infallible  "truth."  It  is  doubtful  whether  the 
Church  ever  attempted  to  prevent  Catholics  from 
adopting  anything  as  long  as  they  did  not  bother 
whether  it  was  "true"  or  not.  This  is  the  real 
mischief,  to  get  your  infallible  divine  truth  con 
fused  with  your  pragmatic  human  truth.  The 
[223] 


"modernist"  in  setting  about  this  confusion  simply 
courts  that  expulsion  which  is  his. 

All  this  seemed  to  me  implicit  in  the  Apologia. 
But  if  the  use  Newman  made  of  infallibility  de 
stroys  the  Protestant  position,  it  no  less  destroys 
the  Catholic.  For  if  you  use  infallibility  as  a 
technique  for  getting  dogmas  into  a  form  in  which 
they  are  easy  to  forget,  you  reduce  the  Church 
from  a  repository  of  truth  to  a  mere  political  in 
stitution.  When  dogma  is  removed  from  discus 
sion,  religious  truth  becomes  irrelevant  to  life  as  it 
is  commonly  lived.  The  Church,  therefore,  can 
touch  life  only  through  its  political  and  organizing 
power,  just  as  any  human  institution  touches  life. 
It  no  longer  touches  it  through  the  divinely  in 
spiring  quality  of  its  thought.  Intellectually  the 
Church  will  only  appeal  to  those  cowed  minds 
which  have  no  critical  power  and  demand  abso 
lutism  in  thought.  Spiritually  it  will  appeal  only 
to  temperaments  like  Newman's  which  crave  a 
guarantor  for  their  mystic  life.  Politically  it  will 
appeal  to  the  subtle  who  want  power  through  the 
devious  control  over  human  souls.  To  few  other 
types  will  it  appeal. 

Newman  unveils  the  true  paradox  of  dogma. 

[224] 


If,  on  the  one  hand,  you  throw  it  open  to  individ 
ual  judgment,  you  destroy  it  through  the  futile 
wranglings  of  faith  which  can  never  be  objec 
tively  solved.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  you  declare 
it  infallible,  you  destroy  it  by  slowly  sending  it  to 
oblivion.  Infallibility  gets  rid  of  dogma  just  as 
surely  as  does  private  judgment.  Under  the  pre 
tense  of  consolidating  the  Church  in  its  cosmic 
role,  Newman,  therefore,  has  really  put  it  in  its 
proper  parochial  place  as  a  pleasant  grouping  of 
souls  who  are  similarly  affected  by  a  collection  of 
beautiful  and  vigorous  poetic  ideas.  Fundamen 
tally,  however,  this  grouping  has  no  more  uni 
versal  significance  than  any  other,  than  a  secret 
society  or  any  religious  sect. 

Thus  Newman  unconsciously  anticipates  the 
most  modern  realist  agnostic.  For  the  latter 
would  agree  that  to  relegate  dogma  to  the  stor 
age-vault  of  infallibility  is  exactly  what  ought 
to  be  done  with  dogma.  At  such  an  infallible  as 
Newman  pictures  no  modern  radical  need  balk. 
Newman's  argument  means  little  more  than  that 
infallibility  is  merely  the  politest  way  of  sending 
an  idea  to  Nirvana.  What  more  can  the  liberal 
ask  who  is  finished  with  theology  and  all  its 

[225] 


works?  He  can  accept  this  infallible  in  even  an 
other  sense.  For  there  is  not  a  single  Christian 
doctrine  in  which  he  does  not  feel  a  kind  of  wild 
accuracy.  Every  Christian  dogma  has  a  poetic 
vigor  about  it  which  might  just  as  well  be  called 
"true"  because  to  deny  its  metaphorical  power 
would  certainly  be  to  utter  an  untruth.  Indeed 
is  not  poetry  the  only  "truth"  that  can  be  called 
infallible?  For  scientific  truth  is  constantly  be 
ing  developed,  revised,  re-applied.  It  is  only 
poetry  that  can  think  in  terms  of  absolutes.  Sci 
ence  cannot  because  it  is  experimental.  But 
poetry  may,  because  each  soul  draws  its  own  mean 
ing  from  the  words*  And  dogma  is  poetry. 

To  render  dogma  infallible  is  to  make  it  some 
thing  that  no  longer  has  to  be  fought  for.  This 
attitude  ultimately  undermines  the  whole  struc 
ture  for  belief.  If  it  is  only  infallible  ideas  that 
we  are  to  believe,  then  belief  loses  all  its  moral 
force.  It  is  no  longer  a  fierce  struggle  to  maintain 
one's  intellectual  position.  Nothing  is  at  stake. 
One  is  not  braced  in  faith  with  the  hosts  of  hell 
assailing  one's  citadel.  To  the  puritan,  belief 
meant  something  to  be  gloweringly  and  tenaci 
ously  held  against  the  world,  the  flesh  and  the 

[226] 


devil.  But  Catholic  belief,  in  the  Newman  at 
mosphere,  is  too  sheltered,  too  safely  insured,  to 
count  excitingly.  One  only  yawns  over  it,  as  his 
own  deep  soul  must  have  secretly  yawned  over  it, 
and  turns  aside  to  the  genuine  issues  of  life.  But 
this  is  just  what  we  should  do  with  belief.  We 
are  passing  out  of  the  faith  era,  and  belief,  as  an 
intellectual  attitude,  has  almost  ceased  to  play  an 
active  part  in  our  life.  In  the  scientific  attitude 
there  is  no  place  whatever  for  belief.  We  have 
no  right  to  "believe"  anything  unless  it  has  been 
experimentally  proved.  But  if  it  has  been 
proved,  then  we  do  not  say  we  "believe"  it,  be 
cause  this  would  imply  that  an  alternative  was 
possible.  All  we  do  is  to  register  our  common  as 
sent  to  the  new  truth's  incontrovertibility.  Nor 
has  belief  any  place  in  the  loose,  indecisive  issues 
of  ordinary  living.  We  have  to  act  constantly  on 
insufficient  evidence,  on  the  best  "opinion"  we  can 
get.  But  opinion  is  not  belief,  and  we  are  lost  if 
we  treat  it  so.  Belief  is  dogmatic,  but  opinion 
has  value  only  when  it  is  tentative,  questioning. 
The  fact  is  that  in  modern  thinking  the  attitude  of 
belief  has  given  place  to  what  may  be  called  the 
higher  plausibility.  Stern,  rugged  conviction 
[227] 


which  has  no  scientific  background  behind  it  is 
coming  to  be  dealt  with  rather  impatiently  by  the 
modern  mind.  We  have  difficulty  in  distinguish 
ing  it  from  prejudice.  There  is  no  hostility  to 
faith,  if  by  "faith"  we  only  mean  an  emotional 
core  of  desire  driving  towards  some  ideal.  But 
idealism  is  a  very  different  thing  from  belief.  Be 
lief  is  impelled  from  behind;  it  is  sterile,  fixed. 
Belief  has  no  seeds  of  progress,  no  constructive 
impulse.  An  ideal,  on  the  other  hand,  is  an 
illumined  end  towards  which  our  hopes  and  en 
deavors  converge.  It  looks  forward  and  pulls  us 
along  with  it.  It  is  ideals  and  not  beliefs  that 
motivate  the  modern  mind.  It  is  meaningless  to 
say  that  we  "believe"  in  our  ideals.  This  sepa 
rates  our  ideals  from  us.  But  what  they  are  is 
just  the  push  of  our  temperaments  towards  perfec 
tion.  They  are  what  is  most  inseparably  and  in 
trinsically  ourselves.  The  place  of  a  belief  which 
put  truth  outside  of  us  and  made  virtue  a  hard 
clinging  to  it  has  been  taken  by  the  idealism  which 
merges  us  with  the  growing  end  we  wish  to 
achieve. 

Newman  illustrates  the  perpetual  paradox  of 
ecclesiasticism,  that  the  more  devoutly  you  accept 

[228] 


the  Church  the  less  important  you  make  it.  As 
you  press  closer  and  closer  to  its  mystic  heart,  its 
walls  and  forms  and  ideas  crumble  and  fade. 
The  better  Catholic  you  are,  the  more  insidious 
your  vitiation  of  Catholicism.  So  that  the  Church 
has  remained  strong  only  through  its  stout  politi 
cians  and  not  through  its  saints.  As  a  casket  for 
the  precious  jewel  of  mysticism,  it  cannot  die. 
But  shorn  of  its  political  power  it  shrinks  to  a 
poetical  society  of  mystics,  held  together  by  the 
strong  and  earthy  bond  of  men  who  enjoy  the  easy 
expression  of  power  over  the  least  intelligent  and 
intellectually  assertive  masses  in  Western  society. 
The  Church  declines  towards  its  natural  limits. 
No  attack  on  it,  no  undermining  of  it  from  within, 
can  destroy  religious  feeling,  for  that  is  an  organ 
ization  of  sentiments  that  are  incarnate  in  man. 
Newman's  emotion,  whatever  his  mind  may  have 
done,  reached  through  to  this  eternal  heart.  Im 
plicit  in  his  intellect,  however,  is  that  demolition 
of  religious  intellectuality  which  has  freed  our 
minds  for  the  work  of  the  future.  He  was  an  un 
conscious  pioneer.  Ostensibly  reactionary,  he  re 
veals  in  his  own  Apologia  an  anticipation  of  our 
modern  outlook.  His  use  of  infallibility  insidi 
ously  destroys  the  foundations  of  belief. 
[229] 


IMPRESSIONS  OF  EUROPE  1913-14  * 

IT  was  my  good  fortune  as  holder  of  the  Gilder 
Fellowship  in  this  University  to  spend  in  Europe 
the  thirteen  months  immediately  preceding  the 
war.  I  used  the  opportunity  for  extensive  travel 
and  general  acclimatization  rather  than  for  spe 
cialized  research,  and  was  thus  able  to  get  an  ex 
tensive  survey  of  the  European  scheme  on  the  eve 
of  a  cataclysm  from  which  it  may  emerge  entirely 
altered.  No  one  can  predict  how  truly  that  year 
will  mark  the  "end  of  an  era."  It  seems  true, 
however,  that  most  of  the  tendencies  of  democ 
racy,  social  reform,  and  international  understand 
ing,  to  whose  development  I  gave  my  most  eager 
attention,  have  been  snapped  off  like  threads,  per 
haps  never  to  be  pieced  together  again.  And  the 
material  development,  so  striking  in  Germany  and 
Italy,  the  rebuilding  of  the  cities  and  the  under 
taking  of  vast  communal  projects,  will  be  indefi- 

1  Report  to  the  Trustees  of  Columbia  University,  1914. 

[230] 


nitely  checked,  from  sheer  want  of  capital,  wasted 
in  the  war. 

No  one  was  more  innocent  than  I  of  the  impend 
ing  horror.  In  fact,  this  menacing  "armed  camp" 
actually  seemed  to  bristle  in  less  sharply  defined 
lines  when  seen  at  close  range.  Public  opinion 
seemed  far  less  violent  than  I  had  expected.  In 
England  there  was  the  persistent  hostility  to  Com 
pulsory  Service,  the  gnawing  compunction  at  the 
folly  of  the  Boer  War,  the  complete  subsidence  of 
the  panic  over  German  invasion.  In  France, 
there  was  the  unyielding  opposition  to  the  new 
three-years'  military  law,  culminating  in  the  rad 
ical  victory  at  the  April  parliamentary  elections,  a 
clear  national  expression  of  reluctance  at  the  in 
creased  military  expenditures;  there  was  the  su 
perb  irony  of  the  French  press  over  the  Zabern  af 
fair,  where  one  would  have  expected  a  raging 
chauvinism;  there  was  the  general  public  depreca 
tion  of  the  activities  of  the  royalists,  and  the  con 
stant  discrediting  of  their  Alsace-Lorraine  propa 
ganda.  In  Italy  I  had  seen  the  wild  outburst  of 
reaction  against  the  criminal  Tripolitan  war,  and 
the  great  general  strike  of  June,  a  direct  popular 
uprising  against  war  and  militarism.  Perhaps  if 


I  had  spent  the  winter  in  Germany,  I  should  have 
felt  the  drift  towards  war,  but  even  there  all  the 
opinion  I  heard  was  of  some  gigantic  slow-moving 
Slavic  pressure,  against  which  defence  must  be 
made.  And  if  public  and  press  were  full  of  blat 
ant  world-defiance,  the  spirit  certainly  escaped  my 
attention.  My  mind  became  quite  reconciled  to 
the  fact  of  "armed  peace."  My  imagination  un 
consciously  began  to  envisage  armaments  as  mere 
frozen  symbols  of  power,  grim,  menacing  and 
costly,  yet  little  more  than  graphic  expressions,  in 
a  language  that  all  the  world  could  understand, 
of  the  relative  strength  and  prestige  of  the  nations. 
In  spite  of  the  uniforms  that  sprinkled  the  side 
walks  and  the  wagon-trains  that  littered  the 
streets,  my  imagination  simply  refused  to  take 
them  as  dynamic.  And  there  was  little  in  press 
and  people  to  make  me  think  that  they  themselves 
took  them  as  dynamic.  How  I  should  have  acted 
if  I  had  known  of  the  imminence  of  the  world- 
war  I  do  not  know,  but  in  the  light  of  the  event 
my  rambles  and  interests  take  on  the  aspect  of  the 
toddlings  of  an  innocent  child  about  the  edge  of  a 
volcano's  crater. 

I  can  give,  however,  a  few  indications  of  what 

[232] 


such  an  innocent  mind  might  see  and  feel  in  Eu 
rope,  this  year  of  last  breathless  hush  before  the 
explosion.  I  concerned  myself  with  getting,  first, 
a  clear  impression  of  the  physical  body  in  which 
each  country  clothed  itself, — the  aspect  of  town 
and  countryside,  villages,  farms,  working-class 
quarters,  factories,  suburbs,  plans  of  towns,  styles 
of  architecture,  characteristic  types  and  ways  of 
living,  of  modern  Europe;  and,  second,  the  atti 
tudes,  social  and  political,  of  various  classes,  the 
social  psychology  of  the  different  peoples.  Such 
acquisitions  had,  of  course,  to  be  the  merest  im 
pressions.  One  could  not  get  "data";  one's  tour 
could  be  little  more  than  a  perpetual  "sizing-up." 
The  best  one  could  do  was  to  settle  down  in  the 
various  capitals  for  a  few  months,  immerse  oneself 
in  the  newspapers,  talk  with  as  many  people  as 
one  could  reach,  read  the  contemporary  novels  and 
plays,  attend  political  meetings  and  meetings  of 
social  reformers,  go  to  church  and  court-house  and 
school  and  library  and  university,  and  watch  the 
national  life  in  action.  One  could  only  cut  one 
self  off  from  American  interests,  imagine  that  one 
had  always  lived  in  the  foreign  city,  and  try,  by  a 
reach  of  sympathy  and  appreciation,  to  assimilate 
[233] 


the  tone  and  spirit  and  attitudes  of  the  people 
among  whom  one  was  living.  Such  an  effort  may 
result  only  in  the  most  fantastic  illusions.  I  am 
not  trying  to  boast  that  I  got  any  understanding 
of  European  countries, — a  matter  of  years  of  ac 
quaintance  and  not  of  months.  I  am  merely  in 
dicating  an  attitude  of  approach.  But  it  was  an 
attitude  I  found  none  too  common  among  Ameri 
can  students  abroad.  Among  the  many  who  were 
conducting  historical  and  political  researches  at 
the  libraries,  I  was  never  able  to  find  any  student 
interested  in  the  political  meetings  of  the  cam 
paign,  for  instance,  which  I  attended  with  so  much 
ardor,  as  a  revelation  of  French  social  psychology. 
The  Americans  I  saw  would  have  an  enthusiasm 
for  particular  things,  perhaps,  that  they  were  in 
terested  in,  a  patronizing  attitude  towards  certain 
immoralities  and  inefficiencies  that  impressed 
them,  but  as  for  a  curiosity  about  the  French  mind 
and  the  French  culture  as  a  whole,  I  could  not  find 
any  interest  that  flowed  along  with  mine.  My 
curiosity,  therefore,  had  to  go  its  own  gait.  I 
seemed  to  have  a  singular  faculty  for  not  getting 
information.  Unless  one  is  fortunate  enough  to 
step  into  a  social  group,  one  must  dig  one's  way 
[234] 


along  unaided.  By  means  of  newspapers  and 
magazines  and  guide-books,  one  hews  out  a  little 
passage  towards  the  center  of  things.  Slowly  a 
definite  picture  is  built  up  of  the  culture  and  psy 
chology  of  the  people  among  whom  one  is  living. 
There  is  no  way,  however,  of  checking  up  one's 
impressions.  One  must  rely  on  one's  intuition. 
Letters  of  introduction  bring  out  only  class  or  pro 
fessional  attitudes.  Very  few  people  are  socially 
introspective  enough  to  map  out  for  you  the  mind 
of  the  society  in  which  they  live.  Only  the 
French  seem  to  have  this  self-consciousness  of  their 
own  traits,  and  the  gift  of  expression,  and  that  is 
why  France  is  incomparably  the  most  interesting 
and  enlightening  country  for  the  amateur  and  curi 
ous  American  student  to  visit. 

These  considerations  suggest  the  fact  that  I 
wish  to  bring  out, — that  my  most  striking  impres 
sion  was  the  extraordinary  toughness  and  homo 
geneity  of  the  cultural  fabric  in  the  different  coun 
tries,  England,  France,  Italy  and  Germany,  that  I 
studied.  Each  country  was  a  distinct  unit,  the 
parts  of  which  hung  together,  and  interpreted  each 
other,  styles  and  attitudes,  literature,  architecture, 
and  social  organization.  This  idea  is  of  course  a 
[235] 


truism,  yet  brought  up,  as  most  Americans  are,  I 
think,  with  the  idea  that  foreigners  are  just  human 
beings  living  on  other  parts  of  the  earth's  surface, 
"folks"  like  ourselves  with  accidental  differences 
of  language  and  customs,  I  was  genuinely  shocked 
to  find  distinct  national  temperaments,  distinct 
psychologies  and  attitudes,  distinct  languages  that 
embodied,  not  different  sounds  for  the  same  mean 
ings,  but  actually  different  meanings.  We  really 
know  all  this;  but  when  we  write  about  the  war, 
for  instance,  we  insensibly  fall  back  to  our  old  atti 
tude.  Most  American  comment  on  the  war,  even 
the  most  intelligent,  suggests  a  complete  ignorance 
of  the  fact  that  there  is  a  German  mind,  and  a 
French  mind  and  an  English  mind,  each  a  whole 
bundle  of  attitudes  and  interpretations  that  har 
monize  and  support  each  other.  And  each  of 
these  national  minds  feels  its  own  reasons  and  emo 
tions  and  justifications  to  be  cosmically  grounded, 
just  as  we  ourselves  feel  that  Anglo-Saxon  moral 
ity  is  Morality,  and  Anglo-Saxon  freedom  Liberty. 
We  do,  of  course,  more  or  less  dimly  recognize 
these  differences  of  national  culture.  We  no 
longer  think  of  other  nations  as  "Barbarians,"  un 
less  they  have  a  national  scheme  which  is  as  much 

[236] 


of  a  challenge  to  our  own  social  inefficiency  as  is 
the  German.  We  express  our  sense  of  the  differ 
ence  by  a  constant  belittling.  Foreigners  are  not 
monsters,  but  Lilliputians,  dwarfs,  playing  with 
toys.  We  do  not  take  other  cultures  seriously. 
We  tend  to  dwell  on  the  amusing,  the  quaint,  the 
picturesque,  rather  than  the  intense  emotional  and 
intellectual  differences.  The  opportunity  to  im 
merse  oneself  in  these  various  cultures  until  one 
feels  their  powerful  and  homogeneous  strength, 
their  meaning  and  depth,  until  one  takes  each  with 
entire  seriousness  and  judges  it,  not  in  American 
terms,  but  in  its  own, — this  is  the  educative  value 
of  a  rapid,  superficial  European  year  such  as  mine. 
The  only  American  book  I  have  ever  been  able  to 
find  that  deals  with  a  foreign  country  in  this  ade 
quate  sense  is  Mr.  BrownelPs  "French  Traits." 
Almost  all  other  writing,  political,  historical,  de 
scriptive,  about  European  countries,  must  be  read 
with  the  constant  realization  that  the  peculiar 
emotional  and  intellectual  biases  of  the  people,  the 
temperamental  traits,  the  soul  which  animates  all 
their  activities  and  expressions,  have  all  been 
omitted  from  consideration  by  the  author. 

I  can  only  give  fragmentary  hints  in  this  short 

[  237  ] 


article  of  the  incidents  which  built  up  my  sense  of 
these  differences  of  national  cultures.  London 
was  the  place  where  I  had  the  best  opportunities 
for  meeting  people  through  letters  of  introduction. 
There  were  glimpses  of  the  Webbs  at  a  meeting  of 
the  Fabian  Society,  which  seems  to  retain  the  alle 
giance  of  its  old  members  rather  than  enlist  the  en 
thusiasm  of  the  younger  generation.  At  their 
house  Mr.  Webb  talked,  as  he  lectures,  with  the 
patient  air  of  a  man  expounding  arithmetic  to 
backward  children,  and  Mrs.  Webb,  passive  by  his 
side,  spoke  only  to  correct  some  slight  slip  on  his 
part;  there  was  another  picture  of  her  sweeping  into 
the  New  Statesman  office  and  producing  a  sudden 
panic  of  reverent  awe  among  the  editorial  staff. 
Lectures  by  Shaw  and  Chesterton  on  succeeding 
nights — Shaw,  clean,  straight,  clear  and  fine  as  an 
upland  wind  and  summer  sun;  Chesterton,  glut 
tonous  and  thick,  with  something  tricky  and  un 
savory  about  him — gave  me  a  personal  estimate 
of  their  contrasted  philosophies.  Then  there  was 
Professor  Hobhouse,  excessively  judicial,  with 
that  high  consciousness  of  excellence  which  the 
Liberal  professor  seems  to  exude ;  Graham  Wallas, 
with  his  personal  vivacity  of  expression  and  lack 

[238] 


of  any  clear  philosophy,  who  considered  the  Amer 
ican  sociologist  a  national  disaster;  H.  G.  Wells, 
a  suggestive  talker,  but  very  disappointing  per 
sonally;  John  A.  Hobson,  whom  I  cannot  admire 
too  much,  a  publicist  with  immense  stores  of 
knowledge,  poise  of  mind,  and  yet  radical  philos 
ophy  and  gifts  of  journalistic  expression,  a  type 
that  we  simply  do  not  seem  to  be  able  to  produce 
in  this  country. 

I  expected  to  find  the  atmosphere  of  London 
very  depressing.  On  the  contrary,  a  sort  of  fat 
uous  cheerfulness  seemed  to  reign  everywhere  on 
the  streets,  in  middle-class  homes,  even  in  the 
slums.  This  impressed  me  as  the  prevailing  tone 
of  English  life.  Wells  and  Bennett  seem  to  have 
caught  it  exactly.  As  for  the  world  that  Mr. 
Galsworthy  lives  in,  though  I  looked  hard  for  his 
people,  I  could  find  nothing  with  the  remotest  re 
semblance.  Such  a  tone  of  optimism  is  possible 
only  to  an  unimaginative  people  who  are  well 
schooled  against  personal  reactions,  and  against 
the  depressing  influences  of  environment — slums 
and  fog  and  a  prevailing  stodginess  of  middle- 
class  life — that  would  affect  the  moods  of  more 
impressionable  peoples.  In  certain  educated  cir- 
[239] 


cles  this  tone  gave  an  impression  of  incorrigible 
intellectual  frivolity.  London  has  fashions  in 
talk.  Significant  discussion  almost  did  not  exist. 
A  running  fire  of  ideational  badinage,  "good  talk," 
took  its  place.  Every  idea  tended  to  go  up  in 
smoke.  You  found  your  tone  either  monstrously 
prophetic,  as  of  a  young  Jeremiah  sitting  at  the 
board,  or  else  unpleasantly  cynical.  Irony  does 
not  seem  to  be  known  in  England. 

The  impression  one  got  from  the  newspapers 
and  magazines  and  popular  books  was  of  a  sort  of 
exuberant  irrelevance,  a  vivacity  of  interest  about 
matters  that  seemed  quite  alien  to  the  personal  and 
social  issues  of  life  as  one  knew  it.  There  seemed 
indeed  to  be  a  direct  avoidance  of  these  issues. 
One  could  never  discover  whether  or  how  much 
an  Englishman  "cared."  The  national  mind 
seemed  to  have  made  a  sort  of  permanent  derange 
ment  of  intellect  from  emotion.  In  no  country  is 
so  large  a  proportion  of  the  literary  product  a  mere 
hobby  of  leisurely  gentlemen  whose  interests  are 
quite  elsewhere.  The  literary  supplements  of  the 
newspapers  used  to  contain  the  greatest  collection 
of  futilities  that  I  ever  saw.  One  got  the  impres 
sion  that  the  intellectual  life  of  the  country  was 

[240] 


"hobbyized,"  that  ideas  were  taken  as  sports,  just 
as  sports  were  taken  as  serious  issues.  This  im 
pression  was  rather  confirmed  at  Oxford,  where 
the  anthropologist,  Marrett,  turned  out  to  be  a 
Jersey  country  gentleman,  digging  up  prehistoric 
bones  on  his  place,  and  mentioning  Chesterton  as 
"entertaining  writer — even  had  him  down  here  to 
lunch,  but  not  a  'gentleman/  you  know,  not  a 
'gentleman.'  '  Oxford  itself  seemed  to  be  one 
long  play  of  schoolboys  in  the  soft  damp  Novem 
ber  air.  Schiller,  who  gave  me  a  delightful  morn 
ing,  after  I  had  attended  his  class  where  the  boys 
came  in  their  black  gowns  and  sat  at  primitive 
desks  in  the  low  room  before  a  blazing  fire,  from 
which  one  looked  out  on  mouldering  walls  and 
dead  ivy  and  the  pale  morning  sun  and  wan  sweet 
decay,  drew  a  wicked  picture  of  the  dons  satisfy 
ing  their  thwarted  sporting  instincts  by  putting 
their  boys  through  their  intellectual  paces  and  pit 
ting  them  against  each  other  in  scholastic  compe 
tition  like  race-horses.  Mr.  McDougall,.  large 
and  with  an  Irish  courtliness,  I  heard  and  liked, 
and  Mr.  L.  P.  Jacks  talked  with  me  at  Manchester 
College.  A  meeting  of  the  Fabians  at  St.  John's 
and  a  lecture  by  Mrs.  Pember  Reeves  on  "Coop- 


eration"  attracted  me,  with  her  dramatic  flaring 
out  at  the  stolid  audience  for  their  "English"  lack 
of  imagination — she  came  from  New  Zealand — 
the  inanely  facetious  comments  of  the  dons,  the 
lumbering  discourses  of  certain  beefy  burgesses 
from  the  local  "Cooperative,"  who  had  not  fol 
lowed  well  the  lady's  nimble  thought.  Every  lit 
tle  incident  of  the  Oxford  week  of  classes  and 
rambles  fitted  into  a  picture  of  the  place  as  a  per 
fect  epitome  of  English  life,  past  and  present.  It 
was  even  more  than  London  a  world. 

Politically,  London  was  dead  that  autumn. 
No  parliament,  and  every  one  weary  of  politics. 
The  bitter  Dublin  strike  dragged  along  with  its 
reverberations  through  the  English  labor  situation, 
which  showed  unrest  and  dissatisfaction  with  its 
leaders  and  much  more  of  "syndicalist"  leaning 
than  any  one  would  admit.  A  debate,  heard  later 
in  Paris,  hit  the  English  labor  situation  off  beau 
tifully, — Longuet,  arguing  that  there  was  no  syn 
dicalism  in  England  because  all  the  leaders  had 
written  him  there  wasn't;  Joyaux,  arguing  that 
there  was,  because  the  unions  were  using  forms  of 
"direct  action"  and  acting  exactly  "as  if"  syndi 
calist  ideas  were  spreading. 

[242] 


The  Lloyd  George  land  campaign  for  the  bet 
tering  of  rural  labor  conditions  was  beginning,  but 
was  arousing  so  little  enthusiasm  that,  with  the  in 
tense  dissatisfaction  over  the  Insurance  Acts  that 
rose  from  every  class,  one  wondered  if  the  energy 
of  the  Liberal  social  program  had  about  spent  it 
self.  The  London  press,  solidly  Tory — extraor 
dinary  situation  for  a  Liberal  country — was  find 
ing,  besides  its  social  grievances,  the  Ulster  theme 
to  play  upon.  Indefatigable  industry,  worthy  of 
a  better  cause,  was  apparently  being  exercised  to 
drum  up  reluctant  English  sentiment  against 
Home  Rule.  All  that  autumn  we  lived  ostensibly 
on  the  brink  of  a  civil  war,  whose  first  mutter- 
ings  did  not  even  occur  till  the  next  July. 

The  suffragettes  were  quiescent,  but  their  big 
meetings  at  Knightsbridge  gave  one  a  new  insight 
into  the  psychology  of  the  movement.  As  one 
watched  this  fusion  of  the  grotesque  and  the 
tragic,  these  pale  martyrs  carried  in  amidst  the 
reverent  hush  of  a  throng  as  mystically  religious 
as  ever  stood  around  the  death-bed  of  a  saint;  or 
as  one  heard  the  terrific  roars  of  "Shame!"  that 
went  up  at  the  mention  of  wrongs  done  to  women, 
pne  realized  that  one  was  in  the  presence  of  Eng- 

[243] 


lish  emotion,  long  starved  and  dried  from  its 
proper  channels  of  expression,  and  now  breaking 
out  irrepressibly  into  these  new  and  wild  ways. 
It  was  the  reverse  side  of  the  idolized  English 
"reticence."  It  was  a  pleasant  little  commentary 
on  the  Victorian  era.  Suffragettism  is  what  you 
get  when  you  turn  your  whole  national  psychic  en 
ergy  into  divorcing  emotion  from  expression  and 
from  intellect. 

A  hysterical  Larkin  meeting  in  Albert  Hall; 
meetings  of  the  Lansbury  people  in  the  East  End, 
with  swarms  of  capped,  cheerful,  dirty,  stodgy 
British  workmen;  a  big  Churchill  meeting  at  Alex 
andra  Palace,  from  which  seventeen  hecklers  were 
thrown  out,  dully,  one  after  the  other,  on  their 
heads,  after  terrific  scrimmages  in  the  audience; 
quieter  lectures  at  the  Sociological  Society,  etc.; 
churches  and  law-courts,  and  tutorial  classes,  and 
settlements,  and  garden  cities,  and  talks  with 
many  undistinguished  people,  rounded  out  my 
London  impression,  and  in  December  I  moved  my 
stage  to  Paris. 

The  weeks  of  getting  a  hearing  acquaintance 
with  the  language  were  spent  in  reading  sociology 
at  the  Bibliotheque  Ste.  Genevieve,  exchanging 

'  [  244 1 


conversation  with  students  at  the  Sorbonne,  and 
attending  still  not  understood  lectures,  in  the  hope 
that  some  day  the  electric  spark  of  apprehension 
might  flash.  I  soon  felt  an  intellectual  vivacity, 
a  sincerity  and  candor,  a  tendency  to  think  emo 
tions  and  feel  ideas,  that  integrated  again  the 
spiritual  world  as  I  knew  it,  and  wiped  out  those 
irrelevances  and  facetiousnesses  and  puzzle-inter 
ests  and  sporting  attitudes  towards  life,  that  so  got 
on  one's  nerves  in  England.  Here  was  also  a  de 
mocracy,  not  a  society  all  shot  into  intellectual 
and  social  castes,  where  one  lived  shut  in  with 
ideas  and  attitudes  that,  like  the  proverbial  os 
trich,  annihilated  the  rest  of  the  world.  In  Eng 
land,  unless  you  were  a  "social  reformer,"  you  did 
not  know  anything  about  anybody  but  your  own 
class;  in  France  there  seemed  to  be  scarcely  any 
social  reformers,  but  everybody  assumed  an  intelli 
gent  interest  in  everything.  In  short,  a  democ 
racy,  where  you  criticized  everything  and  every 
body,  and  neither  attempted  to  "lift"  the  "lower 
orders"  nor  "ordered  yourself  lowly  and  rever 
ently  towards  your  betters."  There  was  a  solid, 
robust  air  of  equality,  which  one  felt  in  no  other 
country,  certainly  not  our  own.  The  labor  move- 

[245] 


ment  had  an  air  of  helping  itself,  and  its  leaders 
showed  an  intellectuality  that  ranked  them  with 
the  professional  men.  In  fact,  the  distinction  be 
tween  the  "intellectual"  and  the  non-intellectual 
seems  to  have  quite  broken  down  in  France. 
Manners,  styles  of  speech,  pronunciation,  ideas, 
the  terms  in  which  things  are  phrased,  seem  to  flow 
rather  freely  over  all  the  classes.  Class-distinc 
tions,  which  hit  you  in  the  face  in  England  and 
America — I  mean,  differences  of  manner  and 
speech,  attitudes  of  contempt  or  admiration  for 
other  types — are  much  blurred.  The  language 
has  remained  simple,  pure,  usable  without  the 
triteness  and  vulgarity  which  dogs  English,  and 
which  constitutes  the  most  subtle  evidence  of  our 
inherent  Anglo-Saxon  snobbery.  It  was  a  new 
world,  where  the  values  and  the  issues  of  life  got 
reinstated  for  me  into  something  of  their  proper 
relative  emphasis. 

With  few  letters  of  introduction,  acclimatiza 
tion  was  much  more  difficult  than  in  London. 
One  had  to  hew  one's  way  around  by  the  aid  of 
the  newspapers.  These  are  infinitely  more  ex 
pressive  of  every  shade  of  political  opinion  than 
is  the  London  press.  They  provided  a  complete 

[246] 


education  in  the  contemporary  world.  Supple 
mented  by  the  interesting  symposiums  in  the  re 
views,  and  the  mapping-out  of  the  various  French 
intellectual  worlds  which  the  youftg  agreges  and 
instructors  I  met  were  always  eager  to  give  me,  the 
Paris  press  provided  a  witty,  interpretative  daily 
articulation  of  the  French  mind  at  work.  It  is  a 
very  self-conscious  and  articulate  mind,  interested 
in  the  psychological  artistic  aspects  of  life  rather 
than  the  objective  active  aspects  which  appeal  to 
the  English.  Life  to  the  Anglo-Saxon  is  what 
people  are  doing;  to  the  Latin,  rather  the  stream 
of  consciousness,  what  individuals  and  also  what 
groups  are  thinking  and  feeling.  This  all  makes 
for  clear  thinking,  constant  interpretation — I  no 
ticed  that  my  young  lawyer  friend  was  all  the  time 
saying  "Voila!  mon  explication!" — and  an 
amount  of  what  might  be  called  social  introspec 
tion  that  makes  France  the  easiest  as  well  as  the 
most  stimulating  country  to  become  acquainted 
with.  The  French  are  right  in  telling  you  that 
their  scholarship  is  not  the  collection  of  insignifi 
cant  facts,  but  the  interpretation  of  significant 
ones,  the  only  kind  of  scholarship  that  is  worth 
anything. 

[247] 


In  Paris,  I  continued  my  general  policy  of  run 
ning  down  the  various  social  institutions,  churches, 
courts,  schools,  political  meetings,  model  tene 
ments,  etc.,  in  order  to  get,  at  least,  a  taste  of 
French  society  in  operation.  I  poked  about  the 
various  quarters  of  town  and  countryside,  and 
talked  to  as  many  people  as  I  could  meet.  After 
the  lectures  at  the  Sorbonne  became  intelligible,  I 
followed  the  public  courses  of  Bougie  and  Dela 
croix  and  Burkheim  in  sociology,  and  when  the 
campaign  for  the  parliamentary  election  came  I 
plunged  into  that,  following  the  bulletin  boards  of 
the  parties,  with  their  flaring  manifestoes — among 
them  the  royalists'  "A  Bas  La  Republique!" 
calmly  left  posted  on  the  government's  own  of 
ficial  bulletin-board,  as  evidence  of  the  most  su 
perb  political  tolerance  I  suppose  any  country  has 
ever  shown ! — and  attending  the  disorderly  meet 
ings  held  in  the  dingy  playrooms  of  the  public 
schoolhouses  or  in  crowded  cafes.  French  free 
dom  of  speech  has  been  struggled  for  too  long  not 
to  be  prized  when  won,  and  the  refusal  to  silence 
interrupters  made  each  meeting  a  contest  of  wits 
and  eloquence  between  the  speaker  and  his  audi 
ence.  The  most  extraordinary  incident  of  "fair 

[248] 


play"  I  ever  saw — Anglo-Saxons  simply  do  not 
know  what  "fair  play"  is — was  at  one  of  Bougie's 
meetings,  where  the  chairman  allowed  one  of  his 
political  opponents,  who  had  repeatedly  inter 
rupted  Bougie,  to  take  the  platform  and  hold  it  for 
half  an  hour,  attacking  Bougie  and  stating  his  own 
creed.  When  he  had  finished  Bougie  took  him  up 
point  by  point,  demolished  him,  and  went  on  with 
his  own  exposition.  This  at  his  own  meeting, 
called  by  his  own  Radical  Party,  to  forward  his 
candidature!  When  I  left  at  12:45  A.M.  the 
meeting  was  still  in  progress.  At  a  Socialist  meet 
ing  an  old  Catholic,  looking  exactly  like  Napoleon 
III,  was  allowed  to  hold  forth  for  several  min 
utes  from  a  chair,  until  the  impatient  audience 
howled  him  off.  Young  normaliennes^  represent 
ing  the  suffrage  movement,  appeared  at  meetings 
of  all  the  parties,  and  were  given  the  platform  to 
plead  the  cause  of  women  as  long  as  the  crowd 
would  listen.  These  young  girls  were  treated  ex 
actly  as  men;  there  was  no  trace  of  either  chiv 
alry  or  vulgarity,  the  audience  reacted  directly  and 
intensely  to  their  ideas  and  not  to  them.  The  first 
impulse  of  a  Frenchman  actually  seems  to  be, 
when  he  hears  something  he  doesn't  like,  not  to 
[249] 


stop  the  other  fellow's  mouth,  but  to  answer  him, 
and  not  with  a  taunt,  or  disarming  wit,  but  with 
an  argument.  In  the  Chamber  of  Deputies  the 
same  spirit  prevailed.  The  only  visible  signs  of 
parliamentary  order  were  Deschanel's  clashing  of 
his  big  bell  and  his  despairing  "Voulez-vous  ecou- 
ter!  Voulez-vous  ecouter!"  The  speaker  in  the 
tribune  held  it  as  long  as  he  was  permitted  by  his 
hearers;  his  interrupter  would  himself  be  inter 
rupted  and  would  exchange  words  across  the  cham 
ber  while  the  official  speaker  looked  resignedly  on. 
The  Left  would  go  off  as  one  man  in  violent  ex 
plosions  of  wrath,  shake  their  fists  at  the  Center, 
call  out  epithets.  Yet  this  was  a  dull  session  that 
I  saw,  only  a  matter  of  raising  the  pay  of  generals. 
Certainly  the  campaign  of  that  election  against 
the  new  Three  Years'  Military  Law  seems  very 
far  away  now.  The  crowd  outside  the  Mairie  of 
the  Vme  the  night  of  the  election  shouting  "A — Bas 
— Les-Trois-Ans,"  in  the  same  rhythmic  way  that 
the  law-students  a  few  weeks  earlier  had  marched 
down  rue  St.  Jacques  yelling  "Cail — laux — as-sas- 
sin !"  knew  no  more  than  I  how  soon  they  would 
need  this  defence  of  more  soldiers.  The  cheers  of 
the  crowd  as  the  splendid  cortege  of  the  English 

•[250] 


sovereigns  swept  along  the  streets  seem  more  im 
portant  than  they  did  to  me  at  the  time.  Dou- 
mergue's  stand-pat  ministry,  with  which  my  stay 
in  Paris  almost  exactly  coincided,  and  during 
which  the  income-tax,  lay-instruction,  and  propor 
tional  representation  issues  slowly  made  progress, 
appears  now  in  the  light  of  a  holding  everything 
safe  till  the  election  was  over,  and  the  President 
could  stem  the  tide  of  reaction  against  the  new 
military  laws.  France  was  waiting  for  the  blow 
to  fall  that  might  be  mortal. 

On  the  first  of  May  I  was  in  Nimes,  delightful 
Southern  city, — where  gaunt  Protestants  gave  out 
tracts  in  the  cars,  and  newspapers  devoted  to  bull 
fighting  graced  the  news-stands, — reading  the  big 
red  posters  of  the  socialist  mayor,  summoning  all 
the  workmen  to  leave  off  work  and  come  out  to 
celebrate  the  International.  Indeed  a  foreign 
land! 

I  arrived  in  Genoa  the  evening  the  Kaiser 
landed  from  Corfu,  and  witnessed  the  pompous 
and  important  event.  In  Pisa,  I  stepped  into  a 
demonstration  of  students,  who  were  moving  rap 
idly  about  the  city  closing  the  schools  and  making 
speeches  to  each  other,  as  a  protest  against  harsh 


treatment  of  Italians  by  the  Austrian  government 
in  Trieste,  the  passionate  leit  motiv  of  Italia  Irre 
denta  that  runs  through  all  current  Italian  thought 
and  feeling.  In  Florence  I  began  to  understand 
"futurism,"  that  crude  and  glaring  artistic  expres 
sion  which  arises  from  the  intolerable  ennui  of  the 
ancient  art  with  which  the  young  Italian  is  sur 
rounded,  the  swarms  of  uncritical  foreigners,  the 
dead  museums.  That  Mona  Lisa  smile  of  Flor 
ence  drove  me  soon  to  Rome,  where  I  sensed  the 
real  Italy,  with  its  industrial  and  intellectual  fer 
ment,  its  new  renaissance  of  the  twentieth  cen 
tury. 

Rome  is  not  a  city,  it  is  a  world.  Every  cen 
tury,  from  the  first  to  the  twentieth,  has  left  its 
traces.  It  is  the  one  city  in  Europe  to  study  west 
ern  civilization,  an  endless  source  of  suggestion, 
stimulation  and  delight.  It  is  the  one  city  where 
the  ancient  and  the  ultra-modern  live  side  by  side, 
both  brimming  over  with  vitality.  The  Church 
and  the  most  advanced  and  determined  body  of 
social  revolutionists  living  side  by  side;  the  Vati 
can  galleries  faced  by  the  futurist;  a  statue  of  Fer 
rer  just  outside  Bernini's  colonnade;  rampant  de 
mocracy  confronting  Prince  Colonnas  and  Borgh- 

[252] 


eses ;  Renaissance  palaces,  and  blocks  of  monstrous 
apartments  built  in  the  mad  speculation  after 
1870;  all  the  tendencies  and  ideas  of  all  Europe 
contending  there  in  Rome,  at  once  the  most  an 
cient  and  the  most  modern  city  we  know.  What 
is  a  month  in  Rome ! 

I  could  do  little  more  than  disentangle  the  po 
litical  currents,  get  familiar  with  certain  names  in 
the  intellectual  world,  and  plot  out  the  city,  his 
torically  and  sociologically,  after  a  fashion.  A 
noted  psychologist,  Dr.  Assagioli  in  Florence,  had 
gone  over  the  philosophical  situation  for  me;  and 
in  Rome,  Professor  Pettazoni  of  the  university 
told  me  of  the  political  tendencies.  A  young 
Modernist  priest,  discharged  from  his  theological 
professorship  for  suspected  connection  with  the 
"Programma,"  who  talked  about  as  much  English 
as  I  did  Italian,  proved  very  friendly  and  inform 
ing,  and  gave  me  a  sense  of  that  vast  subterran 
ean,  resistless,  democratizing  and  liberalizing 
movement  in  the  Church.  Various  types,  Italian 
cavalry  officers,  professors  of  pedagogy,  Sicilian 
lawyers,  an  emotional  law  student  from  Lecce, 
who  took  me  to  the  university  and  talked  repub 
licanism  to  me,  passed  through  the  pension.  And 

[253] 


in  Rome  anyway  you  simply  seeped  Italy  in,  from 
the  newspapers,  as  vivid  and  varied  as  those  in 
Paris,  and  the  host  of  little  democratic  and  polit 
ical  weeklies,  most  of  them  recent,  but  fervent  and 
packed  with  ideas  that  indicated  a  great  ferment 
of  young  intellectual  Italy.  The  young  Floren 
tine  Papini  gives  in  his  picturesque  books  the  pic 
ture  of  the  Italian  soul  struggling  with  French, 
English  and  German  ideas,  and  trying  to  hew  some 
sort  of  order  out  of  the  chaos.  One  got  the  im 
pression  that  Nietzsche  was  raging  through  the 
young  Italian  mind.  But  I  was  all  for  the  candor 
and  sympathy  and  personality  of  this  expression. 
Papers  like  "La  Voce,"  published  by  Papini's 
friends,  have  an  idealistic  sweep  such  as  we  simply 
cannot  imagine  or,  I  suppose,  appreciate  in  this 
country.  I  had  touched  a  different  national  mind. 
Expressions  which  seem  wild  to  us  fell  there  into 
their  proper  and  interpretative  order. 

My  impression  was  that  almost  anything  might 
happen  in  Italy.  While  I  was  in  Rome,  the  Pope 
was  drawing  protests  from  even  the  most  conserva 
tive  clerical  dailies  for  his  obscurantism.  The 
country  seemed  to  be  disillusionizing  itself  about 
representative  government,  which,  though  it  had 
[254] 


become  perfectly  democratic,  and  had  the  most 
sweeping  program  of  social  reform,  was  clumsy 
and  ineffective,  and  had  utterly  failed  to  carry  out 
the  popular  hopes.  The  Crown  scarcely  seemed 
to  be  taken  much  more  seriously  than  in  Norway. 
Republican  sentiment  cropped  up  in  unexpected 
places.  Nationalism  grew  apace,  cleverly  stimu 
lated  by  the  new  capitalistic  bourgeosie  and  the 
new  industry,  which  first  impressed  you  as  you 
came  through  the  long  string  of  gayly-colored, 
swarming  factory  towns  on  the  coast  between  Ven- 
timiglia  and  Genoa.  Political  parties,  National 
ist,  Constitutionalist,  Republican,  Socialist,  etc., 
seemed  as  numerous  as  in  France,  but  there  was 
not  the  same  fluctuation,  for  the  expert  govern 
mental  hand  kept  a  majority,  in  the  Camera. 
This  body  gave  little  of  the  impression  of  dignity 
that  one  had  felt  in  the  French  Chamber.  One 
felt  that  while  in  Italy  democratic  feeling  was 
almost  as  genuine  and  universal  as  in  France,  po 
litical  democracy  had  by  no  means  proved  its 
worth.  That  Latin  passion  for  intellectual  sin 
cerity  and  articulation — that  quality  which  makes 
the  Latin  the  most  sympathetic  and  at  the  same 
time  the  most  satisfactory  person  in  the  world, 

[255] 


because  you  can  always  know  that  his  outward 
expression  bears  some  relation  to  his  inward  feel 
ing — had  resulted,  as  in  France,  in  the  duplication 
of  parties,  which  were  constantly  holding  con 
gresses  and  issuing  programs,  and  then  splitting  up 
into  dissentient  groups.  This  trait  may  be  unfor 
tunate  politically;  but  it  certainly  makes  for  sin 
cerity  and  intelligence,  and  all  the  other  virtues 
which  our  Anglo-Saxon  two-party  system  is  well 
devised  to  destroy. 

This  Latin  quality  of  not  being  reticent,  of  re 
acting  directly  and  truthfully,  had  its  most  dra 
matic  expression  in  the  great  general  strike  of 
June,  which  I  witnessed  in  Rome.  Disgust  and 
chagrin  at  the  Tripolitan  war,  a  general  reaction 
against  militarism,  had  been  slowly  accumulating 
in  the  working  classes,  and  the  smouldering  feel 
ing  was  touched  off  into  a  revolutionary  explosion 
by  the  shooting  of  two  demonstrators  at  Ancona 
by  the  police  on  the  festival  day  of  the  Statuto. 
This  was  followed  in  Rome,  as  in  most  of  the 
other  cities  of  Italy,  by  a  complete  suspension  of 
work.  No  cars  or  wagons  moved  for  three  days; 
no  shops  or  stores  opened  their  doors;  none  of  the 
public  services  were  performed;  the  only  newspa- 

[256] 


per  was  a  little  red  "bolletino"  which  told  of  the 
riots  of  the  day  before.  One  did  nothing  but  walk 
the  garbage-littered  streets,  past  the  shuttered  win 
dows  and  barricaded  doors,  and  watch  the  long 
lines  of  infantry  surrounding  the  public  squares, 
and  the  mounted  carabinieri  holding  the  Piazza  del 
Popolo,  to  prevent  meetings  and  demonstrations. 
The  calm  spirit  of  the  troops,  surrounded  by  the 
excited  crowds,  was  admirable.  And  the  over 
whelming  expression  of  social  solidarity  displayed 
by  this  suspended  city  made  one  realize  that  here 
were  radical  classes  that  had  the  courage  of  their 
convictions.  On  the  third  day,  the  conservative 
classes  recovered  their  breath,  and  I  saw  the 
slightly  fearful  demonstration  of  shouting  youths 
who  moved  down  the  Via  del  Tritone  while  great 
Italian  flags  swung  out  from  one  window  after  an 
other,  greeted  with  wild  hand-clapping  from  every 
thronged  bourgeois  balcony.  The  next  day  the 
darting  trolley-cars  told  the  strike  was  over,  but 
twro  days  later  I  alighted  at  the  Naples  station  into 
a  fortress  held  by  Bersaglieri  against  a  mob  who 
had  been  trying  all  day  to  burn  the  station.  The 
shooting  kept  us  inside  until  the  last  rioters  were 
dispersed,  and  the  great  protest  was  over,  though 

[257] 


it  was  days  before  the  people  of  the  Romagna, 
where  railroads  and  telegraphs  were  cut,  were  con 
vinced  that  the  monarchy  had  not  fallen  and  a  re 
public  been  proclaimed.  The  government  had 
kept  very  quiet,  except  for  the  floods  of  oratory 
that  rolled  through  the  Camera;  if  it  had  not, 
there  might  have  been  a  real  revolution,  instead  of 
merely  the  taste  and  thrill  of  one. 

My  last  political  experience  in  Italy  was  elec 
tion  night  in  Venice,  with  the  triumph  of  the  con 
servatives,  who  had  made  no  bones  of  the  eco 
nomic  interpretation  of  politics,  but  had  placarded 
the  city  with  posters  recalling  to  gondolieri,  hotel- 
keepers  and  shop-keepers,  the  exact  amount  of 
money  they  had  lost  by  reason  of  the  general  strike 
and  the  wild  scurry  of  foreigners  out  of  the  coun 
try.  This  rather  appalling  sum  was  apparently  a 
final  and  clinching  argument,  and  we  heard  the 
gratitude  of  the  Patriarch  from  his  balcony  by 
San  Marco  expressed  to  the  citizens  who  had 
"saved"  their  country.  Such  incidents  are  sym 
bols  of  the  candors  and  delights  of  the  Latin  tem 
perament  and  of  everything  in  the  Latin  countries. 

Switzerland,  besides  its  holidaying,  contributed 
the  Bern  Exposition,  the  intensely  significant  spec- 

[258] 


tacle  of  a  nation  looking  at  itself.  If,  as  was  said, 
every  Swiss  schoolchild  saw  the  exposition  not 
once  but  three  times,  our  day  was  one  of  those 
times.  All  Switzerland  was  there  studying  and 
enjoying  itself.  In  this  little  epitome  of  its  life, 
one  had  a  sense  of  the  refreshing  value  of  living 
in  a  small  country  where  its  activities  and  spirit 
could  all,  in  some  sort  of  fashion,  be  grasped,  un 
derstood,  contemplated,  as  one  might  a  large  pic 
ture.  Most  suggestive,  perhaps,  were  the  great 
water-power  development  projects,  electrical  engi 
neering  schemes,  and  mountain  railroading, 
planned  ahead  in  a  broad  way  for  fifty  years  or  so. 
A  country  that  knew  what  it  was  about,  that  knew 
how  to  use  its  resources  for  large  social  ends ! 

My  German  tour  of  the  last  two  weeks  of  July, 
cut  short  by  the  war,  was  more  definitely  sociolog 
ical.  I  had  been  through  the  Rhine  country  to 
Heidelberg,  Stuttgart,  and  Munich,  the  preceding 
summer.  This  trip  went  straight  north  from 
Friedrichshafen  to  Berlin.  There  were  the  fa 
mous  town-planned  cities  to  be  seen,  and  housing- 
schemes,  which  I  had  followed  rather  closely  in  all 
the  countries,  and  a  general  "sizing-up"  of  Ger 
man  "Kultur."  I  missed  my  settling  down  in 
[259] 


Berlin ;  newspapers  and  people  had  to  be  taken  on 
the  wing.  But  then  the  German  spirit  and  ex 
pression  was  much  more  familiar  to  me  through 
study  than  had  been  the  French  and  Italian.  My 
most  striking  impression  was  of  the  splendor  of 
the  artistic  renaissance,  as  shown  particularly  in 
the  new  architecture  and  household  and  decora 
tive  and  civic  art.  These  new  and  opulent  styles 
are  gradually  submerging  that  fearful  debauch  of 
bad  taste  which  followed  the  French  war,  and 
which  makes  the  business  quarters  of  the  German 
cities  so  hideous.  But  the  newer  quarters,  mon 
uments,  public  buildings  of  the  last  ten  years  have 
a  massive,  daring  style  which  marks  an  epoch  in 
art.  I  have  yet  to  come  across  an  American  who 
likes  this  most  recent  German  architecture;  but  to 
me  buildings  like  the  University  at  Jena,  the  Stutt 
gart  theater,  the  Tietz  shops,  etc.,  with  their  heavy 
concrete  masses  and  soaring  lines,  speak  of  per 
fectly  new  and  indigenous  ideas.  And  if  artistic 
creation  is  a  mark  of  a  nation's  vitality,  the  signifi 
cance  of  this  fine  flare  and  splurge  of  German 
style,  the  endless  fecundity  of  decorative  design 
in  printing  and  furniture,  etc.,  the  application  of 
design  to  the  laying  out  of  towns  and  suburbs,  the 

[260] 


careful  homogeneity  and  integrity  of  artistic  idea, 
should  not  be  overlooked.  These  things  are  fer 
tile,  are  exhilarating  and  make  for  the  enhance 
ment  of  life.  The  Germans  are  acting  exactly  as 
if  they  no  longer  believed,  as  we  do,  that  a  high 
quality  of  urban  life  can  be  developed  in  a  rag 
tag  chaos  of  undistinguished  styles  and  general 
planlessness. 

Specifically,  I  visited  the  municipal  working- 
men's  cottages  in  Ulm  and  saw  the  town-planning 
charts  of  the  city  in  the  office  of  the  Stadtbaurat; 
the  huge  apartments,  municipally  built  and 
owned,  in  Munich;  the  big  Volksbad  in  Nurem 
berg,  and  the  garden-city  workingmen's  suburb  at 
Lichtenhof,  with  the  schoolchildrens'  garden  al 
lotments;  the  model  garbage-disposal  plant  at 
Furth,  a  miracle  of  scientific  resource  and  econ 
omy;  the  extraordinary  model  municipal  slaugh 
ter-house  at  Dresden,  so  characteristically  German 
with  its  Schlachthof  and  Direktorhaus  at  the  en 
trance;  and,  lastly  the  famous  garden-city  of  Hel- 
lerau,  inferior,  however,  on  the  whole,  to  the  Eng 
lish  Hampstead  Suburb  at  Golders  Green. 
Towns  like  Rothenburg  and  Nordlingen  were  lit 
tle  laboratories  of  mediaeval  and  modern  town- 

[261] 


planning.  The  Stadtbaurat  at  Rothenburg  went 
over  for  us  the  development  of  the  city,  and  gave 
us  considerable  insight  into  the  government,  policy 
and  spirit  of  a  typical  little  German  municipality. 
Undemocratic  in  political  form,  yet  ultra-demo 
cratic  in  policy  and  spirit,  scientific,  impartial,  giv 
ing  the  populace — who  seemed  to  have  no  sense  of 
being  excluded  from  "rights" — what  they  really 
wanted,  far  more  truly  than  our  democracies  seem 
to  be  able  to  secure,  this  epitome  of  the  German 
political  scheme  served  to  convince  us  that  we  were 
in  a  world  where  our  ordinary  neat  categories  of 
political  thought  simply  didn't  apply.  It  was  fu 
tile  to  attempt  an  interpretation  in  Anglo-Saxon 
terms.  There  was  no  objective  evidence  of  the 
German  groaning  under  "autocracy"  and  "pa 
ternalism."  One  found  oneself  for  the  first  time 
in  the  presence  of  a  government  between  whom 
and  the  people  there  seemed  to  exist  some  pro 
found  and  subtle  sympathy,  a  harmony  of  spirit 
and  ends. 

It  was  dramatic  to  sweep  up  through  the  endless 
billowing  fields  and  carefully  tended  forests  and 
imposing  factory  towns — Germany,  caught  at 
mid-summer,  in  the  full  tide  of  prosperity — and 

262 


come  into  Berlin  on  the  morning  of  "the  historic 
day,"  July  3ist,  1914,  with  the  agitated  capital 
on  the  brink  of  war ;  to  see  the  arrival  of  the  Kaiser 
and  the  princes  at  the  Schloss ;  to  watch  the  Crown 
Prince's  automobile  blocked  twenty  feet  away 
from  us  by  the  cheering  crowd; — "der  wahre 
Kriegesmann,"  as  the  papers  were  calling  him  in 
contemptuous  contrast  to  his  peaceful  father;  to 
hear  the  speech  of  the  latter — grim,  staccato- 
voiced,  helmeted  figure,  very  symbol  of  war — 
from  the  balcony  of  the  palace ;  to  watch  next  day 
the  endless  files  of  reservists  marching  through  the 
streets  to  the  casernes  to  "einkleiden" ;  and  then 
to  hear  the  finally  fatal  news  of  Russia's  refusal 
with  the  swarming  crowds  on  Unter  den  Linden, 
hysterical  from  both  fervor  and  anxiety.  If  ever 
there  was  a  tense  and  tragic  moment,  when  des 
tiny  seemed  concentrated  into  a  few  seconds  of 
time,  it  was  that  5  p.  M.  on  the  afternoon  of  Aug 
ust  first,  at  the  corner  of  Unter  den  Linden  and 
Friedrichstrasse,  in  Berlin. 

A  midnight  flight  to  Sweden,  with  a  motley 

horde  of  scared  Russians  and  Scandinavians,  and 

two  weeks  in  the  distressed  and  anxious  northern 

countries  ended  my  year.     Nothing  but  the  war; 

[263] 


regiments  of  flaxen-haired  Danish  boys,  mobiliz 
ing  along  the  country  roads  of  Denmark,  the  Land- 
sturm  lolling  along  the  Stockholm  streets,  even  the 
Norwegians  drilling  against  none  knew  what  pos 
sible  attack.  The  heavens  had  fallen.  An  inter 
view  with  Herr  Branting,  the  Swedish  Socialist 
leader,  and  the  depth  of  his  personal  feeling  and 
the  moving  eloquence  with  which  he  went  over  the 
wreck  of  socialist  and  humanitarian  hopes,  gave  us 
the  vividest  sense  of  the  reverberations  of  the 
shock  on  a  distinguished  cosmopolitan  mind. 
The  librarian  of  the  Royal  Library  in  Copen 
hagen,  the  pastor  of  the  Swedish  church,  and  the 
editor  of  "Dagens  Nyheter,"  in  Stockholm,  whom 
we  were  able  to  talk  with,  very  kindly  answered 
our  questions  on  Scandinavian  affairs.  And  we 
have  the  pleasantest  memories  of  Herr  Hambro  in 
Christiania,  editor  of  the  leading  Conservative 
daily,  who  had  just  finished  La  Follette's  auto 
biography,  and  would  have  preferred  to  talk  about 
America  even  to  showing  us  how  the  Radical  par 
ties  in  Norway  were  lording  it  over  their  oppon 
ents.  One  got  the  sense  in  these  countries  of  the 
most  advanced  civilization,  yet  without  sophistica 
tion,  a  luminous  modern  intelligence  that  selected 

[264] 


and  controlled  and  did  not  allow  itself  to  be  over 
whelmed  by  the  chaos  of  twentieth-century  possi 
bility.  There  was  a  mood  of  both  gravity  and 
charm  about  the  quality  of  the  life  lived,  some 
thing  rather  more  Latin  than  Teutonic.  This  is 
an  intuition,  reinforced  by  a  sense  that  nowhere 
had  I  seen  so  many  appealing  people  as  on  the 
streets  of  Copenhagen.  Valid  or  not,  it  was  the 
pleasantest  of  intuitions  with  which  to  close  my 
year. 

This  sketch,  I  find,  has,  in  fact,  turned  out  much 
more  impressionistic  than  I  intended.  But  im 
pressions  are  not  meant  to  be  taken  as  dogmas.  I 
saw  nothing  that  thousands  of  Americans  have  not 
seen;  I  cannot  claim  to  have  brought  back  any  or 
iginal  contribution.  There  was  only  the  sense  of 
intimate  acquaintance  to  be  gained,  that  feeling  of 
at-homeness  which  makes  intelligible  the  world. 
To  the  University  which  made  possible  the  rare 
opportunity  of  acquaintance  with  these  various 
countries  and  cultures,  the  contact  with  which  has 
been  so  incompletely  suggested  in  this  sketch,  my 
immeasurable  thanks! 


[265] 


TRANS-NATIONAL  AMERICA 

No  reverberatory  effect  of  the  great  war  has 
caused  American  public  opinion  more  solicitude 
than  the  failure  of  the  "melting-pot.*"  The  dis 
covery  of  diverse  nationalistic  feelings  among  our 
great  alien  population  has  come  to  most  people  as 
an  intense  shock.  It  has  brought  out  the  un 
pleasant  inconsistencies  of  our  traditional  beliefs. 
We  have  had  to  watch  hard-hearted  old  Brahmins 
virtuously  indignant  at  the  spectacle  of  the  immi 
grant  refusing  to  be  melted,  while  they  jeer  at  pa 
triots  like  Mary  Antin  who  write  about  "our  fore 
fathers."  We  have  had  to  listen  to  publicists 
who  express  themselves  as  stunned  by  the  evidence 
of  vigorous  nationalistic  and  cultural  movements 
in  this  country  among  Germans,  Scandinavians, 
Bohemians,  and  Poles,  while  in  the  same  breath 
they  insist  that  the  alien  shall  be  forcibly  assim 
ilated  to  that  Anglo-Saxon  tradition  which  they 
unquestioningly  label  "American." 
[266] 


As  the  unpleasant  truth  has  come  upon  us  that 
assimilation  in  this  country  was  proceeding  on 
lines  very  different  from  those  we  had  marked  out 
for  it,  we  found  ourselves  inclined  to  blame  those 
who  were  thwarting  our  prophecies.  The  truth 
became  culpable.  We  blamed  the  war,  we 
blamed  the  Germans.  And  then  we  discovered 
with  a  moral  shock  that  these  movements  had  been 
making  great  headway  before  the  war  even  began. 
We  found  that  the  tendency,  reprehensible  and 
paradoxical  as  it  might  be,  has  been  for  the  na 
tional  clusters  of  immigrants,  as  they  became  more 
and  more  firmly  established  and  more  and  more 
prosperous,  to  cultivate  more  and  more  assiduously 
the  literatures  and  cultural  traditions  of  their 
homelands.  Assimilation,  in  other  words,  instead 
of  washing  out  the  memories  of  Europe,  made 
them  more  and  more  intensely  real.  Just  as  these 
clusters  became  more  and  more  objectively  Ameri 
can,  did  they  become  more  and  more  German  or 
Scandinavian  or  Bohemian  or  Polish. 

To  face  the  fact  that  our  aliens  are  already 
strong  enough  to  take  a  share  in  the  direction  of 
their  own  destiny,  and  that  the  strong  cultural 


movements    represented    by    the    foreign    press, 

[267] 


schools,  and  colonies  are  a  challenge  to  our  facile 
attempts,  is  not,  however,  to  admit  the  failure  of 
Americanization.  It  is  not  to  fear  the  failure  of 
democracy.  It  is  rather  to  urge  us  to  an  investi 
gation  of  what  Americanism  may  rightly  mean. 
It  is  to  ask  ourselves  whether  our  ideal  has  been 
broad  or  narrow — whether  perhaps  the  time  has 
not  come  to  assert  a  higher  ideal  than  the  "melt 
ing-pot."  Surely  we  cannot  be  certain  of  our  spir 
itual  democracy  when,  claiming  to  melt  the  na 
tions  within  us  to  a  comprehension  of  our  free  and 
democratic  institutions,  we  fly  into  panic  at  the 
first  sign  of  their  own  will  and  tendency.  We  act 
as  if  we  wanted  Americanization  to  take  place 
only  on  our  own  terms,  and  not  by  the  consent  of 
the  governed.  All  our  elaborate  machinery  of  set 
tlement  and  school  and  union,  of  social  and  po 
litical  naturalization,  however,  will  move  with 
friction  just  in  so  far  as  it  neglects  to  take  into 
account  this  strong  and  virile  insistence  that  Amer 
ica  shall  be  what  the  immigrant  will  have  a  hand 
in  making  it,  and  not  what  a  ruling  class,  descend 
ant  of  those  British  stocks  which  were  the  first  per 
manent  immigrants,  decide  that  America  shall  be 
made.  This  is  the  condition  which  confronts  us, 

[268] 


and  which  demands  a  clear  and  general  readjust 
ment  of  our  attitude  and  our  ideal. 


Mary  Antin  is  right  when  she  looks  upon  our 
foreign-born  as  the  people  who  missed  the  May 
flower  and  came  over  on  the  first  boat  they  could 
find.  But  she  forgets  that  when  they  did  come 
it  was  not  upon  other  Mayflowers,  but  upon  a 
"Maiblume,"  a  "Fleur  de  Mai,"  a  "Fior  di  Mag- 
gio,"  a  "Majblomst."  These  people  were  not 
mere  arrivals  from  the  same  family,  to  be  wel 
comed  as  understood  and  long-loved,  but  strangers 
to  the  neighborhood,  with  whom  a  long  process  of 
settling  down  had  to  take  place.  For  they 
brought  with  them  their  national  and  racial  char 
acters,  and  each  new  national  quota  had  to  wear 
slowly  away  the  contempt  with  which  its  mere 
alienness  got  itself  greeted.  Each  had  to  make  its 
way  slowly  from  the  lowest  strata  of  unskilled  la 
bor  up  to  a  level  where  it  satisfied  the  accredited 
norms  of  social  success. 

We  are  all  foreign-born  or  the  descendants  of 
foreign-born,  and  if  distinctions  are  to  be  made  be 
tween  us  they  should  rightly  be  on  some  other 

[269] 


IMOTfc 

I 


ground  than  indigenousness.  The  early  colonists 
came  over  with  motives  no  less  colonial  than  the 
later.  They  did  not  come  to  be  assimilated  in  an 
American  melting-pot.  They  did  not  come  to 
adopt  the  culture  of  the  American  Indian.  They 
had  not  the  smallest  intention  of  "giving  them 
selves  without  reservation"  to  the  new  country. 
They  came  to  get  freedom  to  live  as  they  wanted 
to.  They  came  to  escape  from  the  stifling  air  and 
chaos  of  the  old  world;  they  came  to  make  their 
fortune  in  a  new  land.  They  invented  no  new 
social  framework.  Rather  they  brought  over  bod 
ily  the  old  ways  to  which  they  had  been  accus 
tomed.  Tightly  concentrated  on  a  hostile  fron 
tier,  they  were  conservative  beyond  belief.  Their 
pioneer  daring  was  reserved  for  the  objective  con 
quest  of  material  resources.  In  their  folkways,  in 
their  social  and  political  institutions,  they  were, 
like  every  colonial  people,  slavishly  imitative  of 
the  mother-country.  So  that,  in  spite  of  the 
"Revolution,"  our  whole  legal  and  political  sys 
tem  remained  more  English  than  the  English,  pet 
rified  and  unchanging,  while  in  England  itself 
law  developed  to  meet  the  needs  of  the  changing 
times. 

[270] 


It  is  just  this  English-American  conservatism 
that  has  been  our  chief  obstacle  to  social  advance. 
We  have  needed  the  new  peoples  —  the  order  of  the 
German  and  Scandinavian,  the  turbulence  of  the 
Slav  and  Hun  —  rto  savejs  from  ur  own 


tion.  I  do  not  mean  that  the  illiterate  Slav  is 
now  the  equal  of  the  New  Englander  of  pure  de 
scent.  He  is  raw  material  to  be  educated,  not 
into  a  New  Englander,  but  into  a  socialized  Amer 
ican  along  such  lines  as  those  thirty  nationalities 
are  being  educated  in  the  amazing  schools  of  Gary. 
I  do  not  believe  that  this  process  is  to  be  one  of 
decades  of  evolution.  The  spectacle  of  Japan's 
sudden  jump  from  medievalism  to  post-modern 
ism  should  have  destroyed  that  superstition.  We 
are  not  dealing  with  individuals  who  are  to 
"evolve."  We  are  dealing  with  their  children, 
who,  with  that  education  we  are  about  to  have, 
will  start  level  with  all  of  us.  Let  us  cease  t< 


think  of  ideals  like  democracy  as  magical  quali- 
t i cs  inherent  in  certain  peoples.  Let  us  speak,  not 
of  inferior  races,  but  of  inferior  civilizations.  \Ve 
are  all  to  educate  and  to  be  educated.  These  peo 
ples  in  America  are  in  a  common  enterprise.  It  is  ~ 
not  what  we  are  now  that  concerns  us,  but  what 

[271] 


this  plastic  next  generation  may  become  in  the 
light  of  a  new  cosmopolitan  ideal. 

We  are  not  dealing  with  static  factors,  but 
with  fluid  and  dynamic  generations.  To  contrast 
the  older  and  the  newer  immigrants  and  see  the 
one  class  as  democratically  motivated  by  love  of 
liberty,  and  the  other  by  mere  money-getting,  is 
not  to  illuminate  the  future.  To  think  of  earlier 
nationalities  as  culturally  assimilated  to  America, 
while  we  picture  the  later  as  a  sodden  and  resistive 
mass,  makes  only  for  bitterness  and  misunder 
standing.  There  may  be  a  difference  between 
these  earlier  and  these  later  stocks,  but  it  lies 
neither  in  motive  for  coming  nor  in  strength  of 
cultural  allegiance  to  the  homeland.  The  truth J£ 
that  no  more  tenacious  cultural  allegiance  to  the. 
mother  country  has  been  shown  by  any  alien  na 
tion  than  by  the  ruling  class  of  Anglo-Saxon  de- 
1  scendants  in  these  American  States.  English 
snobberies,  English  religion,  English  literary 
styles,  English  literary  reverences  and  canons, 
English  ethics,  English  superiorities,  have  been 
the  cultural  food  that  we  have  drunk  in  from  our 
mothers'  breasts.  The  distinctively  American 
spirit — pioneer,  as  distinguished  from  the  reminis- 

[272] 


cently  English — that  appears  in  Whitman  and 
Emerson  and  James,  has  had  to  exist  on  sufferance 
alongside  of  this  other  cult,  unconsciously  belit 
tled  by  our  cultural  makers  of  opinion.  \  No  coun-  JIAA 
try  has  perhaps  had  so  great  indigenous  genius 
which  had  so  little  influence  on  the  country's  tra 
ditions  and  expressions.  The  unpopular  and 
dreaded  German-American  of  the  present  day  is  a 
beginning  amateur  in  comparison  with  those  fool-, 
ish  Anglophiles  of  Boston  and  New  York  and 

"••'•  ''  "*  •«-,..•;% 

Philadelphia  whose  reversion  to  cultural  type  sees 
uncritically  in  England's  cause  the  cause  of  Civ 
ilization,  and,  under  the  guise  of  ethical  independ 
ence  of  thought,  carries  along  European  traditions 
which  are  no  more  "American"  than  the  German 
categories  themselves. 

It  speaks  well  for  German-American  innocence 
of  heart  or  else  for  its  lack  of  imagination  that  it 
has  nott  turned  the  hyphen  stigma)  into  a  "Tu 
quoque!"  If  there  were  to  be  any  hyphens  scat 
tered  about,  clearly  they  should  be  affixed  to  those 
English  descendants  who  had  had  centuries  of 
time  to  be  made  American  where  the  German  had 
had  only  half  a  century.  Most  significantly  has 
the  war  brought  out  of  them  this  alien  virus,  show- 
[273] 


I 


ing  them  still  loving  English  things,  owing  alle 
giance  to  the  English  Kultur,  moved  by  English 
shibboleths  and  prejudice.  It  is  only  because  it 
has  been  the  ruling  class  ia  this  country  that  be 
stowed  the  epithets  that  we  have  not  heard  copi 
ously  and  scornfully  of  "hyphenated  English- 
Americans."  But  even  our  quarrels  with  Eng 
land  have  had  the  bad  temper,  the  extravagance, 
of  family  quarrels.  The  Englishman  of  to-day 
nags  us  and  dislikes  us  in  that  personal,  peculiarly 
intimate  way  in  which  he  dislikes  the  Australian, 
or  as  we  may  dislike  our  younger  brothers.  He 
still  thinks  of  us  incorrigibly  as  "colonials." 
America — official,  controlling,  literary,  political 
America — is  still,  as  a  writer  recently  expressed 
it,  "culturally  speaking,  a  self-governing  domin 
ion  of  the  British  Empire." 

The  non-English  American  can  scarcely  be 
blamed  if  he  sometimes  thinks  of  the  Anglo-Saxon 
predominance  in  America  as  little  more  than  a  pre 
dominance  of  priority.  The  Anglo-Saxon  was 
^merely  the  first  immigrant,  the  first  to  found  a  col 
ony.  He  has  never  really  ceased  to  be  the  de 
scendant  of  immigrants,  nor  has  he  ever  suc 
ceeded  in  transforming  that  colony  into  a  real  na- 

'[  274  ] 


tion,  with  a  tenacious,  richly  woven  fabric  of  na 
tive  culture.  Colonials  from  the  other  nations 
have  come  and  settled  down  beside  him.  They 
found  no  definite  native  culture  which  should  star 
tle  them  out  of  their  colonialism,  and  consequently 
they  looked  back  to  their  mother-country,  as  the 
earlier  Anglo-Saxon  immigrant  was  looking  back 
to  his.  What  has  been  offered  the  newcomer  has 
been  the  chance  to  learn  English,  to  become  a 
citizen,  to  salute  the  flag.  And  those  elements  of 
our  ruling  classes  who  are  responsible  for  the  pub 
lic  schools,  the  settlements,  all  the  organizations 
for  amelioration  in  the  cities,  have  every  reason  to 
be  proud  of  the  care  and  labor  which  they  have 
devoted  to  absorbing  the  immigrant.  His  oppor 
tunities  the  immigrant  has  taken  to  gladly,  with 
almost  a  pathetic  eagerness  to  make  his  way  in  the 
new  land  without  friction  or  disturbance.  The 
common  language  has  made  not  only  for  the  neces 
sary  communication,  but  for  all  the  amenities  of 
life. 

If  freedom  means  the  right  to  do  pretty  much 
as  one  pleases,  so  long  as  one  does  not  interfere 
with  others,  the  immigrant  has  found  freedom, 
and  the  ruling  element  has  been  singularly  liberal 

[275] 


in  its  treatment  of  the  invading  hordes.  But  if 
freedom  means  a  democratic  cooperation  in  de 
termining  the  ideals  and  purposes  and  industrial 
and  social  institutions  of  a  country,  then  the  im 
migrant  has  not  been  free,  and  the  Anglo-Saxon 
element  is  guilty  of  just  what  every  dominant  race 
is  guilty  of  in  every  European  country :  the  imposi 
tion  of  its  own  culture  upon  the  minority  peoples. 
The  fact  that  this  imposition  has  been  so  mild 
and,  indeed,  semi-conscious  does  not  alter  its  qual 
ity.  And  the  war  has  brought  out  just  the  degree 
to  which  that  purpose  of  "Americanizing,"  that  is 
to  say,  "Anglo-Saxonizing,"  the  immigrant  has 

failed. 

. 

For  the  Anglo-Saxon  now  in  his  bitterness  to 
turn  upon  the  other  peoples,  talk  about  their  "ar 
rogance,"  scold  them  for  not  being  melted  in  a  pot 
which  never  existed,  is  to  betray  the  unconscious 
purpose  which  lay  at  the  bottom  of  his  heart.  It 
betrays  too  the  possession  of  a  racial  jealousy  sim 
ilar  to  that  of  which  he  is  now  accusing  the  so- 
called  "hyphenates."  Let  the  Anglo-Saxon  be 
proud  enough  of  the  heroic  toil  and  heroic  sacri 
fices  which  moulded  the  nation.  But  let  him  ask 
himself,  if  he  had  had  to  depend  on  the  English 

[276] 


descendants,  where  he  would  have  been  living  to 
day.  To  those  of  us  who  see  in  the  exploitation 
of  unskilled  labor  the  strident  red  leit-motif  of  our 
civilization,  the  settling  of  the  country  presents  a 
great  social  drama  as  the  waves  of  immigration 
broke  over  it. 

Let  the  Anglo-Saxon  ask  himself  where  he 
would  have  been  if  these  races  had  not  come? 
Let  those  who  feel  the  inferiority  of  the  non-An 
glo-Saxon  immigrant  contemplate  that  region  of 
the  States  which  has  remained  the  most  distinc 
tively  "American,"  the  South.  Let  him  ask  him 
self  whether  he  would  really  like  to  see  the  for 
eign  hordes  Americanized  into  such  an  American 
ization.  Let  him  ask  himself  how  superior  this 
native  civilization  is  to  the  great  "alien"  states  of 
Wisconsin  and  Minnesota,  where  Scandinavians, 
Poles,  and  Germans  have  self-consciously  labored 
to  preserve  their  traditional  culture,  while  being 
outwardly  and  satisfactorily  American.  Let  him 
ask  himself  how  much  more  wisdom,  intelligence, 
industry  and  social  leadership  has  come  out  of 
these  alien  states  than  out  of  all  the  truly  Ameri 
can  ones.  The  South,  in  fact,  while  this  vast 
Northern  development  has  gone  on,  still  remains 

[277] 


an  English  colony,  stagnant  and  complacent,  hav 
ing  progressed  culturally  scarcely  beyond  the  early 
Victorian  era.  It  is  culturally  sterile  because  it 
has  had  no  advantage  of  cross-fertilization  like  the 
Northern  states.  What  has  happened  in  states 
such  as  Wisconsin  and  Minnesota  is  that  strong 
foreign  cultures  have  struck  root  in  a  new  and  fer 
tile  soil.  America  has  meant  liberation,  and  Ger 
man  and  Scandinavian  political  ideas  and  social 
energies  have  expanded  to  a  new  potency.  The 
process  has  not  been  at  all  the  fancied  "assimila 
tion"  of  the  Scandinavian  or  Teuton.  Rather  has 
it  been  a  process  of  their  assimilation  of  us — I 
speak  as  an  Anglo-Saxon.  The  foreign  cultures 
have  not  been  melted  down  or  run  together,  made 
into  some  homogeneous  Americanism,  but  have  re 
mained  distinct  but  cooperating  to  the  greater 
glory  and  benefit,  not  only  of  themselves  but  of  all 
the  native  "Americanism"  around  them. 

What  we  emphatically  do  not  want  is  that  these 
distinctive  qualities  should  be  washed  out  into  a 
tasteless,  colorless  fluid  of  uniformity.  Already 
we  have  far  too  much  of  this  insipidity, — masses 
of  people  who  are  cultural  half-breeds,  neither  as 
similated  Anglo-Saxons  nor  nationals  of  another 

[278] 


culture.     Each  national  colony  in  this  country 


seems  to  retain  in  its  foreign  press,  its  vernacular 

.^^ ^^ ******"""i*Bi*****li***««^**M»«*fc«»<tf^ 

literature,  its  schools,  its  intellectual  and  patriotic 
leaders,  a  central  cultural  nucleus.  From  this  nu- 

•^.•r •-*"*•'  '"''•'      "''     "    '  '"'  •'      •'  •       • 

cleus  the  colony  extends  out  by  imperceptible  gra 
dations  to  a  fringe  where  national  characteristics 
are  all  but  lost.  Our  cities  are  filled  with  these 
half-breeds  who  retain  their  foreign  names  but 
have  lost  the  foreign  savor.  This  does  not  mean 
that  they  have  actually  been  changed  into  New 
Englanders  or  Middle  Westerners.  It  does  not 
mean  that  they  have  been  really  Americanized. 
It  means  that,  letting  slip  from  them  whatever  na 
tive  culture. they  had,  they  have  substituted  for  it 
only  the  most  rudimentary  American — the  Ameri 
can  culture  of  the  cheap  newspaper,  the  "movies," 
the  popular  song,  the  ubiquitous  automobile. 
The  unthinking  who  survey  this  class  call  them 
assimilated,  Americanized.  The  great  American 
public  school  has  done  its  work.  With  these  peo 
ple  our  institutions  are  safe.  We  may  thrill  with 
dread  at  the  aggressive  hyphenate,  but  this  tame 
flabbiness  is  accepted  as  Americanization.  The 
same  moulders  of  opinion  whose  ideal  is  to  melt 
the  different  races  into  Anglo-Saxon  gold  hail  this 

[279] 


poor  product  as  the  satisfying  result  of  their  al 
chemy. 

Yet  a  truer  cultural  sense  would  have  told  us 
that  it  is  not  the  self-conscious  cultural  nuclei  that 
sap  at  our  American  life,  but  these  fringes.  It  is 
not  the  Jew  who  sticks  proudly  to  the  faith  of  his 
fathers  and  boasts  of  that  venerable  culture  of  his 
who  is  dangerous  to  America,  but  the  Jew  who  has 
lost  the  Jewish  fire  and  become  a  mere  elementary, 
grasping  animal.  It  is  not  the  Bohemian  who 
supports  the  Bohemian  schools  in  Chicago  whose 
influence  is  sinister,  but  the  Bohemian  who  has 
made  money  and  has  got  into  ward  politics.  Just 
so  surely  as  we  tend  to  disintegrate  these  nuclei 
of  nationalistic  culture  do  we  tend  to  create  hordes 
of  men  and  women  without  a  spiritual  country, 
cultural  outlaws,  without  taste,  without  standards 
but  those  of  the  mob.  We  sentence  them  to  live 
on  the  most  rudimentary  planes  of  American  life. 
The  influences  at  the  center  of  the  nuclei  are  cen 
tripetal.  They  make  for  the  intelligence  and  the 
social  values  which  mean  an  enhancement  of  life. 
And  just  because  the  foreign-born  retains  this  ex 
pressiveness  is  he  likely  to  be  a  better  citizen  of  the 
American  community.  The  influences  at  the 

[280] 


I 


fringe,  however,  are  centrifugal,  anarchical. 
They  make  for  detached  fragments  of  peoples. 
Those  who  came  to  find  liberty  achieve  only  li 
cense.  They  become  the  flotsam  and  jetsam  of 
American  life,  the  downward  undertow  of  our  civ 
ilization  with  its  leering  cheapness  and  falseness 
of  taste  and  spiritual  outlook,  the  absence  of  mind 
and  sincere  feeling  which  we  see  in  our  slovenly 
towns,  our  vapid  moving  pictures,  our  popular 
novels,  and  in  the  vacuous  faces  of  the  crowds  on 
the  city  street.  This  is  the  cultural  wreckage  of 
our  time,  and  it  is  from  the  fringes  of  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  as  well  as  the  other  stocks  that  it  falls. 
America  has  as  yet  no  impelling  integrating  force. 
It  makes  too  easily  for  this  detritus  of  cultures. 
In  our  loose,  free  country,  no  constraining  national 
purpose,  no  tenacious  folk-tradition  and  folk- 
style  hold  the  people  to  a  line. 

The  war  has  shown  us  that  not  in  any  magical 
formula  will  this  purpose  be  found.  No  intense 
nationalism  of  the  European  plan  can  be  ours. 
But  do  we  not  begin  to  see  a  new  and  more  adven- 
turous  ideal?  Do  we  not  see  how  the  national 
colonies  in  America,  deriving  power  from  the,  deep 
cultural  heart  of  Europe  and  yet  living  here  in 

[281] 


mutual  toleration,  freed  from  the  age-long  tangles 
of  races,  creeds,  and  dynasties,  may  work  out  a 
federated  ideal?  America  is  transplanted  Eu 
rope,  but  a  Europe  that  has  not  been  disintegrated 
and  scattered  in  the  transplanting  as  in  some  Dis 
persion.  Its  colonies  live  here  inextricably  min 
gled,  yet  not  homogeneous.  They  merge  but  they 
do  not  fuse. 

VTJ.T"       .'••        V 

America  is  a  unique  sociological  fabric,  and  it 

bespeaks  poverty  of  imagination  not  to  be  thrilled 

ti  at  the  incalculable  potentialities  of  so  novel  a 

7  f  I  v  union  of  men.     To  seek  no  other  goal  than  the 

-^  -4  .   -^--^Hu*  fc^^^^y**1*"***^^^ 

weary  old  nationalism, — belligerent,  exclusive,  in 
breeding,  the  poison  of  which  we  are  witnessing 
now  in  Europe, — is  to  make  patriotism  a  hollow 
sham,  and  to  declare  that,  in  spite  of  our  boastings, 
America  must  ever  be  a  follower  and  not  a  leader 
of  nations. 

n 

If  we  come  to  find  this  point  of  view  plausible, 

we  shall  have  to  give  up  the  search  for  our  native 

"  "American"  culture.     With  the  exception  of  the 

South  and  that  New  England  which,  like  the  Red 

Indian,  seems  to  be  passing  into  solemn  oblivion, 

•  282 


there  is  no  distinctively  American  culture.  It  is 
apparently  our  lot  rather  to  be  a  federation  of  cul 
tures.  This  we  have  been  for  half  a  century,  and 
the  war  has  made  it  ever  more  evident  that  this  is 
what  we  are  destined  to  remain.  This  will  not 
mean,  however,  that  there  are  riot  expressions  of 
indigenous  genius  that  could  not  have  sprung  from 
any  other  soil.  Music,  poetry,  philosophy,  have 
been  singularly  fertile  and  new.  Strangely 
enough,  American  genius  has  flared  forth  just  in 
those  directions  which  are  least  understanded  of 
the  people.  If  the  American  note  is  bigness,  ac 
tion,  the  objective  as  contrastejd  with  the  reflective 
life,  where  is  the  epic  expression  of  this  spirit? 
Our  drama  and  our  fiction,  the  peculiar  fields  for 
the  expression  of  action  and  objectivity,  are  some 
how  exactly  the  fields  of  the  spirit  which  remain 
poor  and  mediocre.  American  materialism  is  in 
some  way  inhibited  from  getting  into  impressive 
artistic  form  its  own  energy  with  which  it  bursts. 
Nor  is  it  any  better  in  architecture,  the  least  ro 
mantic  and  subjective  of  all  the  arts.  We  are  in 
articulate  of  the  very  values  which  we  profess  to 
idealize.  But  in  the  finer  forms — music,  verse, 
the  essay,  philosophy — the  American  genius  puts 

[283] 


forth  work  equal  to  any  of  its  contemporaries. 
Just  in  so  far  as  our  American  genius  has  ex 
pressed  the  pioneer  spirit,  the  adventurous,  for 
ward-looking  drive  of  a  colonial  empire,  is  it  rep 
resentative  of  that  whole  America  of  the  many 
races  and  peoples,  and  not  of  any  partial  or  tradi 
tional  enthusiasm.  And  only  as  that  pioneer  note 
is  sounded  can  we  really  speak  of  the  American 
culture.  As  long  as  we  thought  of  Americanism 
in  terms  of  the  "melting-pot,"  our  American  cul 
tural  tradition  lay  in  the  past.  It  was  something 
to  which  the  new  Americans  were  to  be  moulded. 
In  the  light  of  our  changing  ideal  of  Americanism, 
we  must  perpetrate  the  paradox  that  our  American 
cultural  tradition  lies  in  the  future.  It  will  be 
what  we  all  together  make  out  of  this  incompar 
able  opportunity  of  attacking  the  future  with  a 
new  key. 

Whatever  American  nationalism  turns  out  to 
be,  it  is  certain  to  become  something  utterly  differ 
ent  from  the  nationalisms  of  twentieth-century 
Europe.  This  wave  of  reactionary  enthusiasm  to 
play  the  orthodox  nationalistic  game  which  is  pass 
ing  over  the  country  is  scarcely  vital  enough  to 
last.  We  cannot  swagger  and  thrill  to  the  same 

[  284  ] 


national  self-feeling.  We  must  give  new  edges  to 
our  pride.  We  must  be  content  to  avoid  the  un 
numbered  woes  that  national  patriotism  has 
brought  in  Europe,  and  that  fiercely  heightened 
pride  and  self-consciousness.  Alluring  as  this  is, 
we  must  allow  our  imaginations  to  transcend  this 
scarcely  veiled  belligerency.  We  can  be  serenely 
too  proud  to  fight  if  our  pride  embraces  the  crea 
tive  forces  of  civilization  which  armed  contest  nul 
lifies.  We  can  be  too  proud  to  fight  if  our  code  of 
honor  transcends  that  of  the  schoolboy  on  the 
playground  surrounded  by  his  jeering  mates. 
Our  honor  must  be  positive  and  creative,  and  not 
the  mere  jealous  and  negative  protectiveness 
against  metaphysical  violations  of  our  technical 
rights.  When  the  doctrine  is  put  forth  that  in 
one  American  flows  the  mystic  blood  of  all  our 
country's  sacred  honor,  freedom,  and  prosperity, 
so  that  an  injury  to  him  is  to  be  the  signal  for 
turning  our  whole  nation  into  that  clan- feud  of 
horror  and  reprisal  which  would  be  war,  then  we 
find  ourselves  back  among  the  musty  schoolmen  of 
the  Middle  Ages,  and  not  in  any  pragmatic  and 
realistic  America  of  the  twentieth  century. 

We  should  hold  our  gaze  to  what  America  has 

[285] 


done,  not  what  mediaeval  codes  of  dueling  she  has 
failed  to  observe.  We  have  transplanted  Euro 
pean  modernity  to  our  soil,  without  the  spirit  that 
inflames  it  and  turns  all  its  energy  into  mutual 
destruction.  Out  of  these  foreign  peoples  there 
has  somehow  been  squeezed  the  poison.  An 
America,  "hyphenated"  to  bitterness,  is  somehow 
non-explosive.  For,  even  if  we  all  hark  back  in 
sympathy  to  a  European  nation,  even  if  the  war 
has  set  every  one  vibrating  to  some  emotional 
string  twanged  on  the  other  side  of  the  Atlantic, 
the  effect  has  been  one  of  almost  dramatic  harm- 
lessness. 

What  we  have  really  been  witnessing,  however 
unappreciatively,  in  this  country  has  been  a  thrill 
ing  and  bloodless  battle  of  Kulturs.  In  that 
arena  of  friction  which  has  been  the  most  dramatic 
— between  the  hyphenated  German-American  and 
the  hyphenated  English-American — there  have 
emerged  rivalries  of  philosophies  which  show  up 
deep  traditional  attitudes,  points  of  view  which 
accurately  reflect  the  gigantic  issues  of  the  war. 
America  has  mirrored  the  spiritual  issues.  The 
vicarious  struggle  has  been  played  out  peacefully 
here  in  the  mind.  We  have  seen  the  stout  resis- 

[286] 


tiveness  of  the  old  moral  interpretation  of  history 
on  which  Victorian  England  throve  and  made  it 
self  great  in  its  own  esteem.  The  clean  and  im 
mensely  satisfying  vision  of  the  war  as  a  contest 
between  right  and  wrong;  the  enthusiastic  sup 
port  of  the  Allies  as  the  incarnation  of  virtue-on- 
a- rampage;  the  fierce  envisaging  of  their  selfish 
national  purposes  as  the  ideals  of  justice,  freedom 
and  democracy — all  this  has  been  thrown  with  in- 
tensest  force  against  the  German  realistic  inter 
pretations  in  terms  of  the  struggle  for  power  and 
the  virility  of  the  integrated  State.  America  has 
been  the  intellectual  battleground  of  the  nations. 


in 

The  failure  of  the  melting-pot,  far  from  clos 
ing  the  great  American  democratic  experiment,  , 
means  that  it  has  only  just  begun.  Whatever 
American  nationalism  turns  out  to  be,  we  see  al 
ready  that  it  will  have  a  color  richer  and  more  ex 
citing  than  our  ideal  has  hitherto  encompassed. 
In  a  world  which  has  dreamed  of  internationalism, 
we  find  that  we  have  all  unawares  been  building 
up  the  first  international  nation.  The  voices 
which  have  cried  for  a  tight  and  jealous  national- 

[287] 


ism  of  the  European  pattern  are  failing.  From 
that  ideal,  however  valiantly  and  disinterestedly 
it  has  been  set  for  us,  time  and  tendency  have 
moved  us  further  and  further  away.  What  we 
have  achieved  has  been  rather  a  cosmopolitan  fed 
eration  of  national  colonies,  of  foreign  cultures, 
from  which  the  sting  of  devastating  competition 
has  been  removed.  America  is  already  the  world- 
A  A  /  federation  in  miniature,  the  continent  where  for 
the  first  time  in  history  has  been  achieved  that  mir 
acle  of  hope,  the  peaceful  living  side  by  side,  with 
character  substantially  preserved,  of  the  most  het 
erogeneous  peoples  under  the  sun.  Nowhere  else 
has  such  contiguity  been  anything  but  the  breeder 
of  misery.  Here,  notwithstanding  our  tragic 
failures  of  adjustment,  the  outlines  are  already  too 
clear  not  to  give  us  a  new  vision  and  a  new  orien 
tation  of  the  American  mind  in  the  world. 

"  It  is  for  the  American  of  the  younger  genera 
tion  to  accept  this  cosmopolitanism,  and  carry  it 
along  with  self-conscious  and  fruitful  purpose. 
In  his  colleges,  he  is  already  getting,  with  the 
study  of  modern  history  and  politics,  the  modern 
literatures,  economic  geography,  the  privilege  of 
a  cosmopolitan  outlook  such  as  the  people  of  no 

[288] 


other  nation  of  to-day  in  Europe  can  possibly  se 
cure.  If  he  is  still  a  colonial,  he  is  no  longer  the 
colonial  of  one  partial  culture,  but  of  many.  He 
is  a  colonial  of  the  world.  Colonialism  has  grown 
into  cosmopolitanism,  and  his  motherhood  is  not 
one  nation,  but  all  who  have  anything  life-enhanc 
ing  to  offer  to  the  spirit.  That  vague  sympathy 
which  the  France  of  ten  years  ago  was  feeling  for 
the  world — a  sympathy  which  was  drowned  in 
the  terrible  reality  of  war — may  be  the  modern 
American's,  and  that  in  a  positive  and  aggressive 
sense.  If  the  American  is  parochial,  it  is  in  sheer 
wantonness  or  cowardice.  His  provincialism  is 
the  measure  of  his  fear  of  bogies  or  the  defect  of 
his  imagination. 

Indeed,  it  is  not  uncommon  for  the  eager  Anglo- 
Saxon  who  goes  to  a  vivid  American  university  to 
day  to  find  his  true  friends  not  among  his  own  race 
but  among  the  acclimatized  German  or  Austrian, 
the  acclimatized  Jew,  the  acclimatized  Scandina 
vian  or  Italian.  In  them  he  finds  the  cosmopol 
itan  note.  In  these  youths,  foreign-born  or  the 
children  of  foreign-born  parents,  he  is  likely  to 
find  many  of  his  old  inbred  morbid  problems 
washed  away.  These  friends  are  oblivious  to  the 

[289] 


repressions  of  that  tight  little  society  in  which  he 
so  provincially  grew  up.  He  has  a  pleasurable 
sense  of  liberation  from  the  stale  and  familiar 
attitudes  of  those  whose  ingrowing  culture  has 
scarcely  created  anything  vital  for  his  America 
of  to-day.  He  breathes  a  larger  air.  In  his  new 
enthusiasms  for  continental  literature,  for  un- 
plumbed  Russian  depths,  for  French  clarity  of 
thought,  for  Teuton  philosophies  of  power,  he 
feels  himself  citizen  of  a  larger  world.  He  may 
be  absurdly  superficial,  his  outward-reaching  won 
der  may  ignore  all  the  stiller  and  homelier  virtues 
of  his  Anglo-Saxon  home,  but  he  has  at  least 
found  the  clue  to  that  international  mind  which 
will  be  essential  to  all  menand  women  of  good-^ 
will  if  they  are  ever  to  save  this  Western  world 
of  ours  from  suicide.  His  new  friends  have  gone 
through  a  similar  evolution.  America  has  burned 
most  of  the  baser  metal  also  from  them!  "M^ing 
now  with  this  common  American  background,  all 

JuJHdBtffiAMflMMHMHBHHHHMVMBMflWV^^  -  -  ^i_^LIT-»m< 

*  of  them  may  yet  retain  that  distinctiveness  of 
their  native  cultures  and  their  national  spiritual 
slants.  They  are  more  valuable  and  interesting 
to  each  other  for  being  different,  yet  that  differ 
ence  could  not  be  creative  were  it  not  for  this 
[290] 


new   cosmopolitan   outlook   which   America   has 
given  them  and  which  they  all  equally  possess. 

A  college  where  such  a  spirit  is  possible  even  to 
the  smallest  degree,  has  within  itself  already  the 
seeds  of  this  international  intellectual  world  of 
the  future.  It  suggests  that  the  contribution  of 
America  will  be  an  intellectual  internationalism 


which  goes  far  beyond  the  mere  exchange  of 
scientific  ideas  and  discoveries  and  the  cold  re 
cording  of  facts.  It  will  be  an  intellectual  sym 
pathy  which  is  not  satisfied  until  it  has  got  at  the 
heart  of  the  different  cultural  expressions,  and  felt 
as  they  feel.  It  may  have  immense  preferences, 
but  it  will  make  understanding  and  not  indigna 
tion  its  end.  Such  a  sympathy  will  unite  and  not 
divide. 

Against  the  thinly  disguised  panic  which  calls 
itself  "patriotism"  and  the  thinly  disguised  mili 
tarism  which  calls  itself  "preparedness"  the  cos 
mopolitan  ideal  is  set.  This  does  not  mean  that 
those  who  hold  it  are  for  a  policy  of  drift.  They, 
too,  long  passionately  for  an  integrated  and  dis 
ciplined  America.  But  they  do  not  want  one 
which  is  integrated  only  for  domestic  economic 
exploitation  of  the  workers  or  for  predatory 
[291] 


economic  imperialism  among  the  weaker  peoples. 
They  do  not  want  one  that  is  integrated  by 
coercion  or  militarism,  or  for  the  truculent  asser 
tion  of  a  mediaeval  code  of  honor  and  of  doubtful 
rights.  They  believe  that  the  most  effective  in 
tegration  will  be  one  which  coordinates  the  diverse 
elements  and  turns  them  consciously  toward  work 
ing  out  together  the  place  of  America  in  the 
world-situation.  They  demand  for  integration  a 
genuine  integrity,  a  wholeness  and  soundness  of 
enthusiasm  and  purpose  which  can  only  come 
when  no  national  colony  within  our  America  feels 
that  it  is  being  discriminated  against  or  that  its 
cultural  case  is  being  prejudged.  This  strength 
of  cooperation,  this  feeling  that  all  who  are  here 
may  have  a  hand  in  the  destiny  of  America,  will 
make  for  a  finer  spirit  of  integration  than  any 
narrow  "Americanism"  or  forced  chauvinism. 
In  thjs,jeiIx&tjKej3ia^  form 


of  that  dual  citizenshi 


articulate  horror  among  us.     Dual  citizenship  we 


may  have  to  recognize  as  the  rudimentary  form 
of  that  international  citizenship  to  which,  if  our 
words  mean  anything,  we  aspire.  We  have  as 
sumed  unquestioningly  that  mere  participation  in 

[292] 


the  political  life  of  the  United  States  must  cut 
the  new  citizen  off  from  all  sympathy  with  his  old 
allegiance.  Anything  but  a  bodily  transfer  of 
devotion  from  one  sovereignty  to  another  has  been 
viewed  as  a  sort  of  moral  treason  against  the  Re 
public.  We  have  insisted  that  the  immigrant 
whom  we  welcomed  escaping  from  the  very  ex 
clusive  nationalism  of  his  European  home  shall 
forthwith  adopt  a  nationalism  just  as  exclusive, 
just  as  narrow,  and  even  less  legitimate  because  it 
is  founded  on  no  warm  traditions  of  his  own. 
Yet  a  nation  like  France  is  said  to  permit  a  formal 
and  legal  dual  citizenship  even  at  the  present  time. 
Though  a  citizen  of  hers  may  pretend  to  cast  off 
his  allegiance  in  favor  of  some  other  sovereignty, 
he  is  still  subject  to  her  laws  when  he  returns. 
Once  a  citizen,  always  a  citizen,  no  matter  how 
many  new  citizenships  he  may  embrace.  And 
such  a  dual  citizenship  seems  to  us  sound  and 
right.  For  it  recognizes  that,  although  the 
Frenchman  may  accept  the  formal  institutional 
framework  of  his  new  country  and  indeed  become 
intensely  loyal  to  it,  yet  his  Frenchness  he  will 
never  lose.  What  makes  up  the  fabric  of  his 
soul  will  always  be  of  this  Frenchness,  so  that 
[2931 


unless  he  becomes  utterly  degenerate  he  will  al 
ways  to  some  degree  dwell  still  in  his  native 
environment. 

Indeed,  does  not  the  cultivated  American  who 
goes  to  Europe  practise  a  dual  citizenship,  which, 
if  not  formal,  is  no  less  real?  The  American 
who  lives  abroad  may  be  the  least  expatriate  of 
men.  If  he  falls  in  love  with  French  ways  and 
French  thinking  and  French  democracy  and  seeks 
to  saturate  himself  with  the  new  spirit,  he  is 
guilty  of  at  least  a  dual  spiritual  citizenship.  He 
may  be  still  American,  yet  he  feels  himself  through 
sympathy  also  a  Frenchman.  And  he  finds  that 
this  expansion  involves  no  shameful  conflict 
within  him,  no  surrender  of  his  native  attitude. 
He  has  rather  for  the  first  time  caught  a  glimpse 
of  the  cosmopolitan  spirit.  And  after  wandering 
about  through  many  races  and  civilizations  he  may 
return  to  America  to  find  them  all  here  living 
vividly  and  crudely,  seeking  the  same  adjustment 
that  he  made.  He  sees  the  new  peoples  here  with 
a  new  vision.  They  are  no  longer  masses  of 
aliens,  waiting  to  be  "assimilated,"  waiting  to  be 
melted  down  into  the  indistinguishable  dough  of 
Anglo-Saxonism.  They  are  rather  threads  of 

[294] 


living  and  potent  cultures,  blindly  striving  to 
weave  themselves  into  a  Viovel  internationaljcia- 
tign^the  first  the  world  has  seen.  1  In  an  Austria- 
Hungary  or  a  Prussia  the  stronger  of  these  cultures 
would  be  moving  almost  instinctively  to  subju 
gate  the  weaker.  But  in  America  those  wills-to- 
power  are  turned  in  a  different  direction  into 
learning  how  to  live  together. 

Along  with  dual  citizenship  we  shall  have  to 
accept,  I  think,  that  free  and  mobile  passage  of 
the  immigrant  between  America  and  his  native 
land  again  which  now  arouses  so  much  prejudice 
among  us.  We  shall  have  to  accept  the  immi- 
grant's  return  for  the  same  reason  that  we  con 
sider  justified  our  own  flitting  about  the  earth. 
To  stigmatize  the  alien  who  works  in  America 
for  a  few  years  and  returns  to  his  own  land,  only 
perhaps  to  seek  American  fortune  again,  is  to 
think  in  narrow  nationalistic  terms.  It  is  to  ig 
nore  the  cosmopolitan  significance  of  this  migra 
tion.  It  is  to  ignore  the  fact  that  the  returning 
immigrant  is  often  a  missionary  to  an  inferior 
civilization. 

This  migratory  habit  has  been  especially  com 
mon  with  the  unskilled  laborers  who  have  been 

[295] 


pouring  into  the  United  States  in  the  last  dozen 
years  from  every  country  in  southeastern  Europe. 
Many  of  them  return  to  spend  their  earnings  in 
their  own  country  or  to  serve  their  country  in  war. 
But  they  return  with  an  entirely  new  critical  out 
look,  and  a  sense  of  the  superiority  of  American 
organization  to  the  primitive  living  around  them. 
This  continued  passage  to  and  fro  has  already 
raised  the  material  standard  of  living  in  many 
regions  of  these  backward  countries.  For  these 
regions  are  thus  endowed  with  exactly  what  they 
need,  the  capital  for  the  exploitation  of  their 
natural  resources,  and  the  spirk>-^£,,.xc^^^rke^ 
America  is  thus  educating  these j  laggard  peoples 
from  the  verybottom  61  iJUl'itiy  up,  awaking  vast 
masses  to  a  new-born  hope  for  the  future.  In  the 
migratory  Greek,  therefore,  we  have  not  the  para 
sitic  alien,  the  doubtful  American  asset,  but  a 
symbol  of  that  cosmopolitan  interchange  which 
is  coming,  in  spite  of  all  war  and  national  ex- 
clusiveness. 

Only  America,  by  reason  of  the  unique  liberty 
of  opportunity  and  traditional  isolation  for  which 
she  seems  to  stand,  can  lead  in  this  cosmopolitan 
enterprise.  Only  the  American — and  in  this  cate- 

[296] 


gory  I  include  the  migratory  alien  who  has  lived 
with  us  and  caught  the  pioneer  spirit  and  a  sense 
of  new  social  vistas — has  the  chance  to  become 
that  citizen  of  the  world.  America  is  coming  to 
be,  not  a  nationality  but  a  trans-nationality,  a 
weaving  back  and  forth,  with  the  other  lands,  of 
many  threads  of  all  sizes  and  colors.  Any  move 
ment  which  attempts  to  thwart  this  weaving,  or  to 
dye  the  fabric  any  one  color,  or  disentangle  the 
threads  of  the  strands,  is  false  to  this_cosmopol i tan 
vision.  I  do  not  mean  that  we  shall  necessarily 
glut  ourselves  with  the  raw  product  of  humanity. 

It  would  be  folly  to  absorb  the  nations  faster  than 

./ 

we  could  weave  them.  We  have  no  duty  either 
to  admit  or  reject.  It  is  purely  a  question  of  ex 
pediency.  What  concerns  us  is  the  fact  that  the 
strands  are  here.  We  must  have  a  policy  and  an 
ideal  for  an  actual  situation.  Our  question  is, 
What  shall  we  do  with  our  America?-  JHowjare 
we  likely  to  get  the  more  creative  America — by 
confining  our  imaginations  to  the  ideal  of  the 
melting-pot,  or  broadening  them  to  some  such 
cosmopolitan  conception  as  I  have  been  vaguely 
sketching? 

We  cannot  Americanize  America  worthily  by 
[297] 


sentimentalizing  and  moralizing  history.  When 
the  best  schools  are  expressly  renouncing  the  ques 
tionable  duty  of  teaching  patriotism  by  means  of 
history,  it  is  not  the  time  to  force  shibboleth  upon 
the  immigrant.  This  form  of  Americanization 
has  been  heard  because  it  appealed  to  the  vestiges 
of  our  old  sentimentalized  and  moralized  patriot 
ism.  This  has  so  far  held  the  field  as  the  expres 
sion  of  the  new  American's  new  devotion.  The 
inflections  of  other  voices  have  been  drowned. 
They  must  be  heard.  We  must  see  if  the  lesson 
of  the  war  has  not  been  for  hundreds  of  these 
later  Americans  a  vivid  realization  of  their  trans- 
nationality,  a  new  consciousness  of  what  America 
means  to  them  as  a  citizenship  in  the  world.  It 
is  the  vague  historic  idealisms  which  have  pro 
vided  the  fuel  for  the  European  flame.  Our 
American  ideal  can  make  no  progress  until  we  do 
away  with  this  romantic  gilding  of  the  past. 

All  our  idealisms  must  be  those  of  future  social 
goals  in  which  all  can  participate,  the  good  life  of 
personality  lived  in  the  environment  of  the  Be 
loved  Community.  No  mere  doubtful  triumphs 
of  the  past,  which  redound  to  the  glory  of  only 
one  of  our  trans-nationalities,  can  satisfy  us.  It 

[298] 


must  be  a  future  America,  on  which  all  can  unite, 
which  pulls  us  irresistibly  toward  it,  as  we  under 
stand  each  other  more  warmly. 

To  make  real  this  striving  amid  dangers  and 
apathies  is  work  for  a  YQunfier  intelfe^^ -^, 
America.  Here  is  an  enterprise  of  integration 
into  which  we  can  all  pour  ourselves,  of  a  spiritual 
welding  which  should  make  us,  if  the  final  menace 
ever  came,  not  weaker,  but  infinitely  strong. 


I  299  ] 


FRAGMENT  OF  A  NOVEL 

GILBERT  was  almost  six  years  old  when  they 
all — Mother,  Olga,  and  baby — went  to  live  with 
Garna  in  her  tall  white  house.  And  his  expand 
ing  life  leaped  to  meet  the  wide  world,  with  its 
new  excitements  and  pleasures.  It  was  like  a  res 
cue,  like  getting  air  when  one  is  smothering. 
Here  was  space  and  a  new  largeness  in  things. 
Gilbert  was  freed  forever  from  the  back-street. 

Garna's  house  was  ridiculous  but  it  was  not  de 
spicable.  For  your  meals  you  went  down  into  a 
dark  basement  dining-room,  behind  a  blacker 
kitchen.  And  the  outhouse,  buried  in  Virginia 
creepers  and  trumpet-vine,  was  down  a  long  path 
bordered  by  grape-vines,  where  you  went  fearfully 
at  night.  Gilbert  was  afraid  of  this  dark,  long 
after  he  was  old  enough  to  be  ashamed  that  his 
mother  must  come  with  him  and  stand  protectingly 
outside.  In  winter,  the  stars  shone  at  him  with 
[300] 


icy  brilliancy,  and  the  vines  made  a  thick  menac 
ing  mass  around  him. 

Back  of  the  house  was  a  pump,  painted  very 
bright  and  green,  where  the  water  came  up  cold 
and  sparkling  and  ran  suddenly  out  of  its  spout 
over  your  shoes  unless  you  were  careful.  And 
when  they  had  finished  pumping,  the  well  would 
give  a  long,  deep  sigh,  whether  of  fatigue  or  satis 
faction,  Gilbert  never  knew.  In  the  dark  kitchen, 
which  you  entered  down  a  flight  of  stone  steps, 
there  was  another  pump,  but  it  brought  forth, 
after  long  persuasion,  only  rain-water  which  to 
Gilbert  tasted  uninteresting,  and  which  he  was 
not  allowed  to  drink,  but  which  they  carried  in 
zinc  pails  up  two  long  spidery  flights,  and  for 
Aunt  Nan's  room,  three,  so  that  you  could  wash 
your  face  in  the  morning.  Only  on  wash-day  was 
that  pump  interesting  when  the  servant  filled  great 
wooden  tubs  out  of  it,  and  created  huge  foamy 
waves  in  them,  and  beat  and  rubbed,  and  then 
filled  long  clothes-lines  with  damp  white  garments 
which  coiled  around  you  clammily  and  disgust 
ingly  if  you  ran  too  close  under  them  when  you 
were  playing. 

The  dining-room  always  had  a  musty  smell,  and 
[301  ] 


was  always  cold  in  winter,  though  the  door  into  the 
warm  kitchen  was  propped  open  with  a  brick. 
Gilbert  would  eat  his  breakfast  and  run  out 
quickly  to  warm  his  hands  at  the  shining  black 
range.  In  the  summer,  it  was  close  and  stuffy,  for 
it  was  lighted  only  by  two  windows  at  the  top 
which  were  level  with  the  ground  and  opened  into 
a  little  depression,  so  that  the  shutters  would  move 
freely.  In  the  great  thunder-storms  of  summer, 
this  hollow  would  fill  with  water  and  as  Gilbert 
sat  there  eating  his  lunch,  thrilling  at  the  loud 
claps  and  the  darting  lightning,  the  water  would 
begin  to  stream  over  the  sill  and  down  the  walls. 
Then  Annie  would  have  to  be  hastily  called,  and 
with  many  ejaculations  she  would  throw  her  apron 
over  her  head,  and  rush  out  with  a  dish-pan  to 
bail  out  the  hollow.  Gilbert  would  stand  on  a 
chair  and  see  dimly  through  rain-streaming  panes 
this  huge  slopping  figure,  throwing  pails  of  water 
into  the  path.  But  ordinarily  nothing  happened 
in  the  dining-room.  Sometimes  in  the  summer, 
an  odious  snail  or  two  would  come  out  of  the 
walls  and  leave  his  track  across  the  worn  carpet. 
In  a  vast  closet  were  stored  rows  of  jellies  which 
Garna  had  put  up,  and  which  Gilbert  and  Olga 
'  [  302  ] 


would  sometimes  get  a  taste  of,  for  a  treat.  Be 
hind  the  dining-room  was  the  cellar,  gratefully 
warm  in  winter  with  its  glowing  furnace,  and  cool 
in  summer  with  its  whitewashed  walls.  Gilbert 
loved  to  spend  long  summer  afternoons  there 
watching  Annie  turn  the  ice-cream  freezer,  and 
waiting  anxiously  until  the  top  was  taken  off  to 
be  tested,  and  you  got  a  taste  of  the  fresh  churned 
cream,  or  licked  the  dasher  when  it  was  all  over. 
Or  sometimes,  in  winter  while  Annie  shovelled 
coal  into  the  furnace,  Gilbert  stood  fearfully  by 
and  saw  the  blackish  flame  shoot  up  through  the 
new  coal.  But  on  the  whole,  the  basement  was 
not  a  pleasant  place.  The  furnace,  so  hot  when 
you  stood  by  it,  sent  only  feeble  currents  of  air  up 
to  the  little  registers  that  opened  into  the  vast 
rooms  above.  And  always,  the  year  round,  there 
was  that  musty  dining-room  to  descend  into  three 
times  a  day,  with  its  old  frayed  chairs,  its  uncer 
tain  carpet,  its  stained  brown  walls. 

Nor  did  the  creatures  who  inhabited  the  base 
ment  attract  him.  Annie  changed  her  guise,  but 
not  her  nature.  And  she  scarcely  changed  her 
guise.  If  his  mother  had  ever  had  a  servant  in 
the  back-street,  Gilbert  did  not  remember  it.  But 
[303] 


in  Garna's  house  one  naturally  had  a  servant,  and 
one  naturally  had  a  Polish  girl.  Gilbert  did  not 
at  first  understand  what  Annie  was  doing  in  the 
kitchen,  this  queer,  whitish  young  woman  with 
many  skirts  and  vast  breasts,  who  gave  a  sort  of 
growl-smile  when  you  spoke  to  her,  and  always 
started  incontinently,  with  alacrity,  to  do  some 
thing  without  knowing  what  it  was.  Gilbert 
would  come  in  from  the  garden  into  the  fragrant 
kitchen  on  baking-day  to  look  for  cookies,  and 
find  his  mother  moving  about,  with  her  serious, 
anxious  expression,  while  Annie  sprawled  about, 
cutting  up  potatoes,  and  listening  to  his  mother's 
earnest  expostulations.  In  a  few  months  there 
would  be  another  Annie;  her  mouth  was  perhaps 
crookeder  and  her  hair  yellower,  but  she  would 
plunge  clumsily  about  in  the  same  old  way,  and 
would  take  up  her  education  not  where  the  other 
Annie  had  left  off,  but  precisely  in  that  brutish 
ignorance  where  she  had  begun.  To  Gilbert's 
mother,  the  living  and  successive  tissue  of  Annies 
became  the  absorption  of  life,  but  Gilbert  was  not 
absorbed  in  Annies.  They  were  not  pretty,  and 
they  had  a  stale  odor  which  Gilbert  avoided  when 
he  could.  He  associated  the  unpleasantness  of 
[304] 


this  strong,  docile  creature,  who  relapsed  in  each 
transformation  to  her  original  brutish  ignorance, 
with  the  whole  unpleasantness  of  that  downstairs 
floor,  the  dining-room  which  remained  always  the 
same,  whose  dull  squalor  nobody  ever  did  anything 
to  take  away,  for  which  Gilbert  could  not  do  any 
thing,  and  for  which  perhaps  nothing  could  be 
done. 

Upstairs,  Gilbert  liked  Garna's  house  better. 
The  front  parlor  was  a  vast  and  cavernous  room, 
the  mysteries  of  which  Gilbert  penetrated  only 
slowly.  The  back  parlor  was  much  more  compre 
hensible.  Here  the  sun  shone  in,  and  people  sat 
and  lived.  When  you  entered  the  front  parlor, 
you  involuntarily  lowered  your  voice,  and  you 
moved  around  subdued,  as  if  someone  had  died 
there.  Garna  never  opened  the  windows,  and  the 
shutters  of  the  bay  which  looked  towards  the  east 
were  always  kept  tightly  closed.  But  in  the  back 
parlor  on  bright  winter  days  you  sent  the  shade 
flying  up  to  the  top,  and  let  the  sun  stream  in 
over  the  floor  all  the  way  to  the  monster  of  a 
horsehair-covered  sofa  which  stretched  along  the 
wall. 

Horsehair  made  you  feel  almost  as  puckery  as 
[305] 


matting  to  touch  it,  and,  besides,  you  could  not 
climb  up  its  slippery  edges  very  easily.  And  once 
you  were  perched  up  there,  you  began  to  slide  and 
slide  until  you  would  fall  in  a  heap  ignominiously 
off  that  ungainly  and  inhospitable  bulk  of  a  sofa. 
So  you  would  go  over  and  sit  at  Garna's  feet,  as 
she  rocked  slowly  in  her  great  chair,  which  you 
must  never  tip  too  far  back  for  fear  of  the  grand 
father's  clock  that  stood  in  the  corner  behind  it. 
The  clock  had  a  loud  and  lovely  bell  which  struck 
the  hours.  Gilbert  could  always  tell  when  it  was 
going  to  strike,  for  a  minute  or  two  before  the 
hour  there  was  a  sharp  click.  Then  a  little  later 
would  begin  a  vast  rumbling  from  the  very  chest 
of  the  old  clock,  as  if  it  were  taking  a  long,  deep 
breath  for  its  pealing  song.  When  Gilbert  was 
in  the  room,  he  always  stopped  and  listened  for 
the  whole  long  satisfactory  performance.  It  was 
slow,  it  was  prepared,  it  was  beautiful,  and  when 
Garna  got  a  clock  for  the  dining-room  which 
rattled  off  a  quick  little  tinkle  of  a  stroke,  Gilbert 
despised  it,  and  would  have  covered  his  ears  if  he 
had  not  thought  it  would  be  silly. 

Upstairs  the  rooms  were  just  as  vast.     There 
was    Mother's    room,    into    which    the    sunlight 

[306] 


poured,  and  which  was  the  warmest  in  winter, 
though  you  took  turns  rushing  to  the  register  to 
dress  where  it  was  warm,  before  washing  in  the 
cold  water  of  the  wash-bowl.  Just  off  from 
Mother's  room  was  a  little  room,  with  nothing  in 
it  but  a  huge  bed,  where  Olga  and  Gilbert  slept, 
and  a  dresser,  in  which  Gilbert's  clothes  were  kept. 
On  the  wall  were  two  old  pictures,  one  represent 
ing  a  donkey  in  the  midst  of  illimitable  and  in 
effable  summer  pastures,  and  marked,  "Everything 
Lovely,"  the  other  showing  him  in  the  blizzard 
before  a  locked  stabledoor,  with  "Nobody  loves 
me!"  Against  the  tall  window,  at  the  foot  of 
the  bed,  were  rows  and  rows  of  shelves,  on  which 
stood  flower-pots  all  winter  long,  geraniums  and 
begonias,  and  heliotrope  plants,  so  that  they  could 
catch  the  full  warmth  of  the  winter  sun  and  keep 
green  for  summer,  when  Mother  took  them  out  of 
the  pots  and  put  them  in  rows  in  the  garden  again. 
The  window  was  almost  smothered  in  rich  green 
ery,  and  sometimes  when  Gilbert  would  wake  up 
early  on  a  winter  morning,  when  the  light  was  just 
beginning  to  come  through  the  leaves,  he  would 
find  that  the  shelves  had  become  a  black  silhouet 
ted  tracery  of  amazing  figures.  Queer  outlandish 

[307] 


heads, — fierce  dragomans  with  pipes  in  their 
mouths,  Chinamen  with  queues,  policemen  with 
round  helmets,  or  animals  such  as  Gilbert  had  seen 
at  the  Zoo — camels  with  misshapen  humps,  ele 
phants  with  long  trunks,  the  head  of  a  lion.  It 
was  very  startling  to  wake  up,  lying  on  one's  back 
and  gazing  out  where  this  faint  light  appeared  in 
the  crevices  between  these  weird  figures.  The 
pleasant  green  plants  with  which  they  had  gone 
to  bed  had  given  place  to  queer  apparitions.  Yet 
they  must  be  plants.  But  how  could  plants  look 
so  terrify ingly  like  heads?-  Everywhere  he  looked 
there  appeared  a  bristling,  clear  shape.  The  win 
dow  was  a  vast  tracery  of  strangeness.  Gilbert 
was  never  quite  sure  how  real  they  were,  and  he 
was  always  grateful  when  the  advancing  light 
gradually  brought  out  the  greenness  of  the  leaves, 
and  finally  threw  them  into  relief,  so  that  the 
menacing  head  would  finally  dissolve  into  the 
utterly  meaningless  juncture  of  two  geranium  blos 
soms,  and  the  elephant  trunk  became  a  familiar 
begonia  frond.  Then  he  was  cheered,  and  he 
wondered  how  he  had  ever  seen  anything  else. 
No  wildest  forcing  of  his  imagination  could  make 
him  see  the  things  he  had  seen. 

[308] 


It  was  in  this  room  that  Gilbert's  mother  put 
the  children  to  bed  every  night,  and  then  took  out 
the  lamp  to  her  room,  leaving  the  door  just  slightly 
ajar,  so  they  would  not  be  afraid.  Everything 
was  so  cozy  and  comfortable  during  the  undress 
ing.  Then  would  come  the  frightening  thought, 
"Perhaps  this  comforting  presence  is  going  to  be 
withdrawn !"  For  sometimes  you  would  wake  up 
suddenly  with  a  little  clutch  at  the  heart.  The 
dim  light  would  be  burning  through  the  crack  of 
the  door,  but  there  would  be  a  vast  stillness.  You 
knew  that  the  house  was  empty,  that  somehow  it 
was  the  middle  of  a  night  that  would  never  end, 
and  everybody,  Garna,  Mother,  and  Annie,  had 
gone  off  to  some  distant  muffled  cavern  and  would 
never  come  again.  Olga,  sleeping  in  a  little 
round  ball  at  your  side,  her  eyes  seraphically 
closed,  was  of  no  avail.  The  light  burned  steadily 
on,  only  deepening  the  terror  of  eternity,  of  being 
lost.  Should  you  call  ?  What  would  be  the  use  *? 
They  were  infinitely  far  away,  in  a  sort  of  Buddha- 
like  trance.  So  you  cried  a  little,  and  fell  off 
asleep. 

Or  if  you  did  not  go  to  sleep,  you  waited 
dumbly,  and,  after  aeons  of  time,  you  heard  an  un- 
[309] 


mistakable  door  close  softly  downstairs,  and  in  a 
minute  Mother  was  looking  in  at  you,  to  see  if 
you  were  safe.  And  you  said,  "Mother!"  in  a 
half-choking  voice,  while  great  waves  of  relief  and 
happiness  surged  through  you,  and  you  went  sound 
asleep.  So  Gilbert  got  in  the  habit  of  asking  his 
mother  every  night  whether  she  was  going  out. 
And  what  assurance  and  peace  there  was  when  she 
said  she  was  not!  He  was  safe,  no  matter  how 
long  the  night  lasted. 

In  Gilbert's  new  house,  you  could  go  upstairs  in 
two  ways — the  front-stairs,  and  the  back-stairs. 
The  front-stairs  were  very  straight  and  very  long 
and  very  steep,  and  were  covered  with  a  thick 
carpet.  They  went  straight  down  to  a  little 
narrow  hall  and  the  front  door.  The  back-stairs 
were  crooked  and  narrow  and  covered  with  oil 
cloth.  They  ran  down  to  a  little  passageway 
which  connected  the  back  parlor  with  the  "side- 
door,"  right  at  the  opening  of  the  dark,  steep 
flight  that  went  down  into  the  dining-room.  All 
these  regions  and  passages  in  Gilbert's  house  had 
names.  Gilbert  soon  learned  that  he  must  never 
go  down  the  front-stairs,  but  must  always  use  the 
back  ones.  But  one  unfortunate  day,  his  cousin 


George,  who  was  eight,  showed  him  the  delights 
of  sliding  down  the  banisters,  and  Gilbert,  al 
though  he  could  never  walk  down  the  front-stairs 
without  a  feeling  of  the  most  awful  guilt,  let  him 
self  be  seduced  into  this  new  and  amazing  adven 
ture.  The  rapturous  slide  down  the  long,  straight, 
polished  wood  was  so  safe  and  gave  him  such  a 
thrill  that  he  tried  it  again  and  again.  But  Olga, 
who  by  this  time  was  all  of  five  years  old,  insisted 
on  riding  too,  and  threatened  so  instant  and  tumul 
tuous  a  devastation  of  tears,  that  Gilbert  and 
George,  in  a  panic  at  being  discovered,  held  her  up 
and,  having  adjusted  her  little  legs  and  cautioned 
her  as  to  the  way  one  let  one's  fingers  slide  along 
the  slippery  rail,  let  her  go. 

Now  there  was  attached  to  the  wall  by  a  bracket 
a  lamp,  which  Gilbert's  legs  just  cleared,  although 
he  was  always  conscious  of  a  fine  potential  crash. 
But  as  Olga  went  slipping  down  the  rail,  it  was 
inevitable  that  she  should  choose  just  that  place 
to  fall  off,  which  Gilbert  had  all  the  morning 
been  thrillingly  avoiding.  She  fell  floppily  into 
the  hall,  carrying  the  lamp-shade  with  her,  and 
making  a  crash  which  brought  Mother  and  Annie 
from  the  kitchen  and  Garna  from  her  room  above. 


Then  there  were  tears  and  scoldings  in  a  great 
flood,  and  a  few  reluctant  whacks;  George  was 
sent  home,  and  the  banisters  were  never  slid  on 
again,  at  least  not  by  Olga.  Gilbert  used  them 
only  as  a  special  treat  to  himself  and  only  in  his 
most  unwatched  moments.  It  was  one  instance 
where  his  fiercely  clutching  guilt  melted  away  be 
fore  the  thrill  of  that  slide. 

Gilbert's  house,  however,  afforded  few  excite 
ments.  Garna's  big  room  you  did  not  often  enter, 
though  you  might  on  Sunday  while  she  was  put 
ting  on  her  veil  and  bonnet  to  take  you  to  church. 
Gilbert  did  not  care  very  much  how  the  rest  of 
.the  family  got  to  church,  but  it  was  one  of  the 
most  important  things  in  his  life  that  he  should 
go  with  Garna.  At  nine  o'clock  the  church-bell 
would  begin  to  ring,  gayly,  quickly,  sometimes  the 
long  peals  almost  falling  over  each  other  in  their 
eagerness.  Then  it  would  stop,  with  a  final  long 
echo.  Now  the  whole  town  knew  that  it  was 
Sunday.  Then  at  ten  o'clock  the  great  bell  would 
ring  again,  not  quite  so  gayly  nor  so  quickly,  to 
let  the  people  know  that  there  would  be  church 
that  day.  Then  at  twenty  minutes  after  ten  the 
bell  would  begin  its  real  earnestness, — slow  and 


solemn  strokes,  each  one  ringing  its  lull  sonorous 
note  and  dying  away  before  the  next  one  began. 

At  the  first  stroke  of  the  ten  o'clock  bell,  Glbert 
would  rush  to  Garna' s  room,  where  he  would  find 
her  putting  on  her  black  silk  dress  and  little  lace 
collar.  Her  black  bonnet  with  its  long  crepe  veil, 
which  Gilbert  soon  learned  meant  that  grand 
father  was  dead,  would  be  spread  out  on  the  bed. 
When  the  last  bell  began  to  ring,  and  Garna  had 
not  yet  put  on  her  bonnet,  an  icy  fear  gripped 
Gilbert's  heart.  They  would  be  late !  The  mad 
dening  slowness  with  which  Garna  put  the  last 
touches  to  her  bonnet  used  to  send  Gilbert  into  a 
delirium  of  anxiety.  Finally  they  were  out  on 
the  elm-shaded  streets,  Gilbert  fairly  tugging  and 
straining  to  get  them  there  before  service  began. 
Mother  and  Olga  were  always  late,  but  that  was 
because  Olga  cried.  He  could  abandon  them. 
He  did  not  know  what  would  happen  to  Garna 
and  him  if  they  were  late,  but  he  felt  that  it  would 
be  something  namelessly  awful. 

But  they  were  never  late.     They  would   sit 

there  in  the  pew  several  minutes  while  the  organ 

played  and  the  great  bell  boomed  outside,  up  in 

the  tower.     Then  the  minister  would  come  in,  and 

[313] 


a  sense  of  security  and  peace  would  steal  over 
Gilbert,  listening  to  the  hymn  and  looking  up  at 
Garna,  so  glossy  and  placid  next  him  in  the  pew. 

In  prayer-time,  Gilbert  would  have  liked  to  put 
his  head  down  on  the  pew-rail  in  front  of  him, 
just  as  Garna  and  all  the  other  people  did,  but 
he  could  not  reach  it.  So  he  had  to  be  content 
with  ducking  his  head  into  his  hand,  and  holding 
his  eyes  very  tightly  shut  until  he  heard  the 
"Amen"  which  sent  them  all  upright  again.  Why 
people  had  to  conceal  their  faces  while  they  prayed 
Gilbert  did  not  know,  but  it  gave  him  a  very 
solemn  feeling  to  keep  his  eyes  closed,  and  an  even 
more  solemn  one  to  open  them  surreptitiously  and 
look  over  the  wilderness  of  bent  backs. 

The  ceiling  was  very  far  away,  and  very  blue, 
with  queer  indented  squares  that  shot  out  reddish 
lines.  Out  of  it  came  two  enormous  chandeliers 
of  brass,  with  a  ring  of  lights  around,  which  were 
sometimes  lighted  on  a  dark  day  and  made  a  chain 
of  dancing  lamplight.  There  were  galleries  run 
ning  down  each  side  of  the  church,  held  up  by 
slender  white  pillars.  Outside,  just  at  the  top  of 
the  pillars,  ran  a  narrow  ledge.  Gilbert's  imagi 
nation  would  perform  perilous  adventures  along 

[SHI 


that  ledge.  You  would  walk  along,  along,  and 
around  the  back  and  up  the  other  side,  dizzily 
perched  above  the  congregation,  clinging  to  the 
brass  rail,  and  you  would  come  to  the  choir  behind 
the  minister's  desk.  From  the  ledge  to  the  choir 
was  a  gap  of  a  few  feet,  but  Gilbert  saw  himself 
jumping  it,  and  his  heart  would  beat  faster.  And 
then  he  would  return  painfully,  exhilaratedly, 
around  that  ledge,  holding  on  so  tightly. 

When  Gilbert  got  tired  of  this  play  he  would 
look  up  at  the  strange  figures  that  were  fastened 
to  the  under  side  of  the  ledge.  They  looked  like 
playing-cards,  little  square  raised  blocks  marked 
with  black  points,  at  regular  intervals  down  the 
gallery.  Gilbert  sometimes  imagined  that  they 
were  really  cards,  and  that  a  hooded  figure  mov 
ing  down  the  aisles  would  touch  them  with  a 
wand,  and  they  would  lose  their  frozen  state  and 
fall  to  the  floor.  From  where  Gilbert  sat,  lines 
went  out  from  him  in  all  directions:  lines  of  the 
pews,  lines  of  the  aisle  ahead  which  went  along 
under  the  gallery,  angles  of  the  walls,  lines  of  the 
windows.  Sometimes,  as  his  gaze  wandered 
around  the  church,  the  line  of  a  pillar  would  co 
incide  with  the  line  of  a  window,  and  Gilbert 

[315] 


would  hold  them  there  together,  getting  a  sudden 
satisfaction  out  of  holding  them  in  coincidence, 
and  letting  them  go  reluctantly,  only  when  his  eye 
would  mount  to  the  queer  people  in  the  gallery, 
whose  bonnets  and  eyes  and  noses  you  could  just 
see  over  the  brass  railing. 

Sometimes  in  the  summer  when  Uncle  Marcus's 
family  was  away,  Garna  and  Gilbert  sat  in  their 
pew  at  the  back  of  the  gallery,  a  pew  that  was  as 
big  as  a  house,  with  great  arm-chairs  and  cushions 
for  your  feet.  In  front  of  you  was  the  clock,  the 
face  of  which  you  could  not  see,  for  it  looked  out 
straight  towards  the  minister,  but  whose  ticking 
you  could  hear.  Gilbert  felt  very  public  and  self- 
conscious  when  he  sat  there,  under  the  high  ceil 
ing,  with  two  long  arms  of  the  gallery,  crowded 
with  its  two  tiers  of  people,  stretching  away  on 
either  hand.  Yet  it  was  all  very  august,  and  re 
ligion  seemed  to  have  attained  its  most  solemn 
worthiness  when  you  sat  in  Uncle  Marcus's  pew. 

The  minister  was  very  large  and  very  loud,  and 
he  wore  a  white  tie.  Gilbert  did  not  altogether 
like  him  when  he  laid  his  moist  and  unctuous  hand 
on  Gilbert's  head,  as  he  sometimes  did  in  Sunday 
School.  For  after  you  had  gone  to  church  with 

[316] 


Garna,  you  let  her  go  home,  and  you  stayed  to 
Sunday  School.  You  went  into  an  old  brick 
building,  which  stood  a  little  distance  from  the 
church.  The  light  poured  through  the  big  win 
dows,  and  you  could  see  the  lilac-bushes  outside. 
The  room  swam  with  very  fluffy  little  girls,  but 
when  they  had  sung  several  hymns,  Gilbert  and 
half  a  dozen  other  little  boys  were  shepherded 
into  a  corner  and  sat  on  their  little  chairs  in  a 
circle  around  Miss  Fogg,  while  she  taught  them 
the  lesson  for  the  day.  Gilbert  always  knew  his 
golden  text,  and  he  was  often  the  only  little  boy 
who  did.  Miss  Fogg  would  smile  at  him,  which 
would  make  him  uncomfortable,  and  he  would  be 
glad  when  they  all  stood  up  and  marched  around 
the  room  to  drop  their  pennies  into  a  basket  which 
Miss  Fogg  held  while  they  sang: 

"Hear  the  pennies  dropping, 
Listen  while  they  fall, 
Every  one  for  Jesus. 
He  will  have  them  all." 

Gilbert  did  not  doubt  that  Jesus  would  have 
them  all,  and  he  was  not  in  the  least  interested  in 
what  Jesus  did  with  them  when  he  had  them.  It 
was  part  of  the  ceremony,  to  which  you  resigned 

[317] 


yourself  unquestioningly,  and  when  the  penny- 
dropping  was  over,  Gilbert  ran  home  as  fast  as  he 
could  go,  to  the  wonderful  dinner  of  roast  beef 
and  potatoes  that  Mother  had  for  them  on  Sun 
days. 

Sunday  School  was  a  neutral,  colorless  event  in 
his  life.  Every  Sunday  as  they  left  the  Sunday 
School,  each  child  would  receive  a  little  leaflet; 
those  who  had  known  their  golden  texts  would  get 
a  card  with  a  golden  star  on  it.  Gilbert  always 
cried  a  little  if  he  lost  his  card  while  running 
home,  and  he  cherished  his  leaflet  for  a  day  or  two. 
But  he  never  tried  to  read  it,  and  he  soon  mislaid 
his  golden  star.  Good  boys,  after  they  had  got 
a  prodigious  number  of  golden  stars,  were  each 
supposed  to  receive  as  a  reward  a  Bible  all  of  his 
own.  But  when  Gilbert  was  seven  years  old, 
Garna  gave  him  a  beautiful  thick  black  Bible, 
with  his  name — Gilbert  Shotwell  Harden — 
stamped  on  the  cover  in  golden  letters.  Besides, 
it  did  not  appeal  to  him  to  grub  along  for  a  prize. 
Far  better  to  have  things,  glorious,  imposing,  come 
to  you  out  of  the  blue  sky  Once  Aunt  Shotwell 
promised  him  fifty  cents  if  he  would  learn  the 
Westminster  Catechism,  but  Gilbert  never  got 


farther  than  "The  chief  end  of  man  is  to  glorify 
God  and  enjoy  him  forever."  Something  obscure, 
unconscious,  revolted  in  him  at  the  base  commer- 
ciality  of  the  transaction,  and  although  he  did  not 
question  that  this  was  the  chief  end  of  man  indeed, 
he  did  not  want  to  be  bribed  into  proclaiming  it. 

Things  were  better  in  the  stories  he  learned  from 
Miss  Fogg:  that  Adam  had  eaten  the  apple  and 
been  expelled  from  Eden;  that  Noah  had  built 
and  taken  his  cruise  in  the  ark;  that  Abraham  had 
offered  up  Isaac,  and  Jacob  served  seven  years; 
that  Moses  had  led  the  Israelites  into  the  wilder 
ness,  and  Joshua  made  the  sun  stand  still;  that 
David  should  have  loved  Jonathan  and  killed 
Goliath;  that  Samson  should  have  been  shorn  of 
his  strength,  and  Esther  gotten  Haman  hanged 
higher  than  the  housetops; — all  in  order  to  teach 
little  boys  and  girls  to  be  good,  to  obey  their 
fathers  and  mothers  and  go  regularly  to  church 
and  Sunday  School,  seemed  to  Gilbert  entirely 
plausible,  at  least  as  it  was  expounded  by  the 
patient  and  smiling  Miss  Fogg.  He  read  the 
stories  in  his  new  Bible,  but  he  did  not  wonder 
much  about  them. 

Every  now  and  then  there  was  a  temperance 

[319] 


lesson,  when  Miss  Fogg  would  horrify  the  little 
boys  with  her  pictures  of  the  evils  of  strong  drink. 
Gilbert  had  never  seen  any  spirituous  liquors,  and 
he  could  hardly  identify  them  in  his  mind,  but 
through  the  vivid  and  scandalized  exhortations  of 
the  minister  and  Miss  Fogg,  Gilbert  conceived 
liquor  as  a  dark,  evil-smelling  brew,  a  sort  of  re 
ligious  urine,  which  foul  and  wicked  men  put  into 
their  stomachs,  so  that  at  once  homes  were  wrecked, 
and  mothers  and  children  brought  to  abject  want. 
The  process  by  which  this  result  arrived  was  vague 
in  his  mind,  but  the  earliest  genuine  crime  of  which 
he  had  knowledge  and  felt  with  a  shuddering 
realization  of  the  existence  of  sin  was  this  crime 
of  entering  a  saloon,  or  of  drinking  down  wine  or 
beer.  One  of  the  golden  texts  was  a  special  favor 
ite  with  Gilbert  and  Olga,  and  she  would  declaim 
it  with  great  eclat,  in  a  broad,  free-verse  style: 

"Wine  is  a  maw-aw-ker, 
Strong  drink  is  ray-ay-ging, 
And  whoever  is  deceived  there-by-y, 
Is  not — wise !" 

But  sin,  on  the  whole,  was  a  very  vague  idea 
to  Gilbert.  He  early  learned  that  God  had  sent 
His  Son  Jesus  down  to  earth  to  save  us  from  our 


sins,  and  that  this  was  the  central  fact  of  life. 
Garna  told  him  about  it,  and  so  did  Miss  Fogg, 
when  they  later  had  lessons  in  the  New  Testament. 
We  must  all  love  God  very  much,  and  especially 
Jesus,  who  had  done  so  much  for  us.  And  in  the 
solemn  Sunday  afternoons,  when  Gilbert  was  told 
to  take  his  Bible  and  sit  by  the  window  in  the 
back-parlor  and  read  a  chapter,  he  would  some 
times  wonder  if  he  loved  God  enough,  or  if  he 
loved  Jesus.  God  was  a  majestic  old  gentleman 
with  a  white  beard,  reclining  on  white  cumulous 
clouds,  and  Jesus  he  knew  equally  well  as  a  young 
man  in  an  archaic  blue  robe,  holding  a  lamb  in 
one  arm,  and  followed  by  others.  He  had  seen 
their  pictures  long  ago,  and  whenever  either  of 
them  was  mentioned,  these  images  popped  into 
his  mind,  faintly  colored  by  a  sense  of  awe,  as  in 
the  case  of  God,  and  of  tenderness,  as  in  the  case 
of  Jesus.  But  did  he  love  them?  The  pastor 
was  certainly  a  very  poor  caricature  of  God,  and 
yet  with  his  beard  and  square  head  and  loud  words, 
there  must  be  a  faint  resemblance.  Gilbert  cer 
tainly  did  not  like  him. 

Much  more  nearly  like  God  was  his  father's 
father,  whom  he  had  once  been  taken  to  see  and 


whom  he  remembered  now  as  a  white-haired, 
white-bearded  man,  very  solemn,  and  yet  with 
something  cold  and  repellent  about  him  whenever 
Gilbert  had  touched  him.  Gilbert  did  not  feel 
that  he  loved  this  God,  and  yet  he  knew  that  he 
ought  to,  that  it  was  the  most  important  thing  in 
life  that  he  could  do.  So  he  would  sit  there  and 
try  to  screw  his  heart  into  an  attitude  of  loving. 
He  would  grow  very  serious  and  tighten  his  mus 
cles,  and  fix  his  thought  on  the  majesty  reclining 
on  the  white  cloud,  and,  pretty  soon,  he  would  feel 
that  indeed  he  now  loved  God,  and  he  would  be 
kept  from  sin.  Jesus,  who  was  tenderer,  he  might 
have  found  easier  to  love,  but  for  the  fact  of  those 
lambs.  Gilbert  had  never  seen  young  men  carry 
ing  lambs,  and  the  picture,  whose  authenticity  he 
did  not  question,  aroused  no  emotion  within  him. 
But  after  he  had  come  to  love  God,  he  tightened 
his  heart  towards  the  benignant  being  in  the  blue 
robe. 

He  was  always  present,  because  before  every 
meal  they  would  all  put  down  their  heads,  so  that 
they  breathed  upon  their  plates,  and  they  would 
ask  Jesus  to  bless  their  food.  Sometimes  Gilbert 
would  say  it,  sometimes  Olga,  and  the  food  un- 
[322] 


blessed  would  have  tasted  bad  in  their  mouths. 
Gilbert  would  have  had  a  vague  presentiment  of 
something  evil.  Did  Garna  and  Mother  love 
God?  Garna  must,  because  every  day  she  would 
put  on  her  gold-rimmed  spectacles  and  read  a 
chapter  in  her  Bible,  and  mother  would  kneel 
down  with  Gilbert  and  Olga  at  night  while  they 
said  their  prayers,  and  often  murmur  something 
fervently  with  them.  The  prayers,  they  under 
stood,  were  addressed  directly  to  God  in  heaven, 
and  were  necessary  if  you  were  to  show  your  grati 
tude  to  the  Heavenly  Father  and  ensure  for  your 
self  a  peaceful  and  secure  night.  You  asked  God 
also  to  bless  all  those  people  you  were  fond  of, 
and  you  knew  that  if  they  should  die  before  they 
woke,  their  souls  also  would  be  taken  to  Heaven 
with  yours. 

If  it  was  only  with  painful  effort  that  Gilbert 
in  his  early  days  of  church  and  Sunday  School 
loved  God  and  Jesus,  whom  did  he  love*?  Did 
he  love  Mother?  He  did  not  know.  He  loved 
her  very  much  at  night  when  he  felt  her  protect 
ing  presence  in  the  house,  but  in  the  daytime  she 
was  a  strange  being  who  did  not  seem  interested 
in  Gilbert  and  Olga.  She  spent  most  of  her  time 
[323] 


with  little  brother,  or,  if  he  were  asleep,  she  would 
be  lying  stretched  across  the  foot  of  the  bed,  with 
her  face  in  her  hands.  Often  there  were  tears  in 
her  eyes,  and  if  Gilbert  wanted  her  to  do  some 
thing  for  him,  she  would  say  piteously  that  she 
was  not  well.  There  were  no  more  walks  on  the 
village  green,  but  this  did  not  make  any  difference 
to  Gilbert,  for  the  wonderful  yard  in  which 
Garna's  house  stood  was  a  region  that  could  never 
be  explored  or  exhausted. 

The  one  person  that  Gilbert  knew  he  loved  was 
Garna.  You  could  not  always  see  her,  for  she 
would  be  shut  up  in  her  room ;  but  when  you  were 
let  in,  how  inexhaustible  she  was,  how  comfortable 
you  felt,  playing  about  on  the  floor  while  Garna 
sat  always  by  the  window,  sewing,  always  sewing, 
looking  so  wise  and  jolly  and  good  out  of  her 
gold-rimmed  spectacles.  Garna  was  always  the 
same,  and  always  good  to  be  with  and  look  upon. 
Gilbert  loved  to  sit  in  her  lap,  and  touch  her  hair, 
brushed  to  such  silky  smoothness  and  parted  in 
the  middle.  As  she  bent  over,  he  would  run  both 
hands  back  over  it  from  her  forehead,  and  laugh 
as  she  laughed  and  pretended  to  arrange  it  again. 

Gilbert  liked  to  have  Garna  all  to  himself,  and 

[324] 


it  was  fortunate  that  Olga  was  not  much  interested 
in  Garna.  She  did  not  seem  to  half  appreciate 
her  or  her  wonderful  room.  But  once  in  a  while 
she  would  take  a  perverse  desire  to  come  in  with 
Gilbert  when  he  went  to  see  Garna.  Olga  would 
have  to  be  prevented  with  all  his  weight  and  force. 
How  could  he  stand  so  outrageous  an  invasion  of 
his  rights?  And  Olga  would  probably  hit  him, 
concentrating  all  her  round  little  pugnacity  into 
one  stout  blow,  and  Gilbert  would  hit  back,  and 
Olga  would  scream,  and  Mother  would  come  run 
ning,  and  there  would  be  many  tears,  and  Eden 
would  be  spoiled,  if  not  altogether  denied  him, 
for  that  afternoon.  On  the  very  threshold,  Olga, 
who  did  not  really  care  to  be  with  Garna,  had 
ruined  his  day  with  her!  Hateful  little  Olga! 
And  all  the  time,  Garna  would  be  inside,  behind 
the  closed  door,  serene,  unheeding,  letting  her 
daughter,  Gilbert's  mother,  settle  the  whole  affair, 
as  far  away  as  if  she  were  in  Pampelune.  Gilbert 
felt  the  perversity  of  Fate,  the  inexorable  aloof 
ness  of  the  gods,  the  fragility  of  happiness. 
Going  eagerly  to  taste  this  sweet  exhilaration  of 
an  afternoon  with  Garna,  the  cup,  without  any 
warning  whatever,  would  be  fatally  dashed  from 

[325] 


his  lips.     But  he  could  not  have  it  shared  with 
Olga! 

Between  Garna's  chair  and  the  window  was  a 
high,  chintz-colored  box  which  opened  into  a 
voluminous  cavern  of  sheets  and  white  things.  In 
the  corner  just  behind  Garna's  chair  was  the  tall 
secretary-desk,  with  its  big  doors  above  that 
opened  on  shelves  full  of  books,  and  its  heavy 
writing-lid  which  folded  down  and  rested  horizon 
tally  on  two  supports  that  pulled  out  on  each  side. 
You  could  sit  on  the  high  chintz-box  and  write  on 
the  secretaire.  Gilbert  thought  this  was  one  of 
the  most  satisfactory  spots  in  the  whole  world. 
At  your  right  was  the  window  looking  down 
through  the  black-walnut  trees  to  the  street  below; 
just  behind  you  sat  Garna,  busily  knitting  or  sew 
ing;  you  had  all  the  flat,  shiny  surface  of  the  lid 
to  make  your  puzzles  on,  or  practise  writing,  or 
draw  on ;  your  legs  hung  down  over  the  chintz-box, 
high  above  the  ground;  you  were  shut  in  to  the 
most  delicious  privacy.  At  the  back  of  the  secre 
taire  were  innumerable  compartments  and  pigeon 
holes  in  which  Garna  kept  her  letters  and  papers; 
there  were  old  diaries  and  account-books,  which 
Gilbert  puzzled  over,  and  one  compartment  Garna 

[326] 


gave  Gilbert  for  his  very  own,  so  that  he  could 
keep  his  pencils  and  paper  there,  and  anything  he 
chose,  safe  for  ever  from  the  depredations  of  the 
marauding  Olga,  who  seemed  to  Gilbert,  when 
ever  he  thought  of  her  at  all  from  his  safe  retreat, 
as  a  very  imp  of  lawlessness,  of  restless  and  de 
vastating  mischief.  Sometimes,  to  make  sure  that 
no  one  interrupted  him,  he  would  silently  turn 
the  keys  in  the  doors.  But  Garna  did  not  like 
that  very  much,  and  it  was  awkward  if  Mother  or 
Aunt  Nan  really  came  and  wanted  to  come  in,  and 
Garna  had  to  wonder  hew  the  doors  could  ever 
have  become  locked. 

In  the  summer  afternoons  Garna  would  take 
her  waist  off,  and  sit  sewing  in  her  bare  arms. 
Gilbert  liked  to  lean  over  and  rub  his  face  against 
the  expanse  of  cool  flesh,  lay  his  head  on  the  cool 
shoulder,  and  listen  to  Garna's  stories  of  when 
she  was  a  little  girl.  Gilbert  learned  about  her 
father's  house  in  Burnham,  which  he  should  some 
day  see,  but  it  was  a  long  distance  from  where 
they  lived  now;  about  his  mill-pond  and  his  mill, 
where  great  mahogany  logs  that  came  from  the 
West  Indies  were  sawed  up  for  furniture;  about 
the  canal  that  was  dug,  when  she  was  a  little  girl, 
[327] 


through  their  very  front  yard,  and  on  which  they 
saw  the  very  first  boat  sail  grandly  by,  the  grand 
father  of  those  boats  that  Gilbert  had  loved  to 
watch  from  the  porch  of  the  house  in  the  back- 
street,  and  which  he  had  almost  forgotten  now 
that  he  had  come  to  live  with  Garna. 

So  he  would  lean  there  against  her  arm,  strok 
ing  her  plump  elbow  with  its  dimples  that  so 
fascinated  him,  and  listening  to  her  stories  until, 
in  the  drowsy  summer  air,  he  sank  away  indis 
tinctly,  and  knew  nothing  until  he  woke  up 
towards  supper-time  on  Garna' s  high  bed.  Every 
now  and  then,  as  a  great  distinction  and  event, 
Gilbert  would  be  allowed  to  sleep  with  Garna. 
How  different  and  solemn  it  was  from  any  other 
sleep!  When  Gilbert  said  good-night  to  Garna 
in  her  big  chair  in  the  back-parlor,  it  was  with  a 
"I'm  going  to  sleep  with  you  to-night !"  Then  he 
would  get,  not  into  the  hard  little  bed  with  Olga, 
but  into  the  great  feathery  soft  bed  in  Garna's 
room.  He  would  sink  off  to  sleep  in  billows  and 
oceans  of  soft  pillows  and  sheets.  Along  towards 
morning  he  would  half  wake,  perhaps,  and  there 
would  be  the  huge,  comforting,  dear  presence  of 
Garna  filling  the  bed  beside  him,  as  he  lay  pressed 

[328] 


against  her  warm  night-gown.  And  when  he 
woke  again,  Mother  would  be  there  standing  by 
the  side  of  the  bed,  and  she  would  whisk  him  off 
to  her  room  to  be  dressed.  And  life  would  go  on 
as  before. 

Aunt  Nan  seemed  to  love  Garna  as  much  as 
Gilbert  did.  And  she  liked  Gilbert.  Often,  on 
summer  days,  she  would  take  him  up  to  her  room 
in  the  third-story,  a  region  to  which  Gilbert  never 
ventured  alone,  for  there  were  queer,  pitchy-black 
closets  and  alcoves  that  led  far  back  under  the 
sloping  roof,  and  contained  trunks  and  boxes,  in 
which  and  behind  which  you  never  knew  what 
menacing  forces  of  evil  might  be  hidden.  At  the 
top  of  the  stairs  was  a  little  hall,  lighted  by  a  sky 
light,  through  which  you  saw  the  blue  sky.  Aunt 
Nan's  room  was  shaped  like  an  L,  but  the  ceiling 
on  one  side  ran  down  so  steeply  that  Gilbert  could 
stand  against  the  wall  and  touch  the  line  where 
it  joined  the  ceiling.  Aunt  Nan  would  fix  up  a 
pallet  on  the  floor,  soft  and  comfortable,  and  on 
hot  days  Gilbert  would  roll  half-naked  on  it, 
while  Aunt  Nan  rubbed  his  hot  arms  with  a  sweet- 
smelling  balsam.  Then  she  would  sit  and  read 
a  great  shiny  new  book,  which  Gilbert  spelled 

[329] 


out  as  "Psychology.  James."  She  had  several 
books  on  shelves  over  her  desk,  and  a  great  bunch 
of  programs  stuck  together  on  an  iron  hook  that 
hung  on  the  wall.  In  the  winter  Aunt  Nan  was 
not  in  the  house.  Mother  said  she  was  a  teacher, 
and  lived  in  New  York. 

Aunt  Nan  was  very  tall  and  slender  and  very 
straight,  and  she  had  very  black  hair  that  came 
over  her  forehead  in  a  kind  of  bang.  She  always 
wore  black  and  white  dresses,  and  she  always  had 
a  bright  fierceness  about  her  that  Gilbert  liked. 
She  was  several  years  younger  than  Mother,  and 
she  was  very  proud.  There  was  a  stiff  exhilara 
tion  in  her  walk  and  in  her  laugh  that  daunted 
Gilbert  a  little,  but  made  him  like  to  be  with  her. 
Sometimes  she  would  put  the  tennis-net  across  the 
green  lawn  and  play  with  a  neighbor,  darting  so 
swiftly,  like  a  long  black  bird,  across  the  green, 
hitting  the  ball  so  straight  and  true,  and  blazing 
so  fiercely  with  her  black  eyes  when  she  missed, 
that  Gilbert  sat  enthralled,  motionless,  until  the 
set  was  over  and  they  went  in  to  supper.  On 
those  days  he  would  help  her  mark  the  court,  go 
ing  to  the  little  barn  and  watching  her  fill  the 
marker  with  white  powdery  lime,  and  then  help- 

[330] 


ing  her  push  it  over  the  closely-mown  grass.  The 
long  summer  days  were  full  of  Aunt  Nan.  She 
loved  the  garden,  with  its  flower-beds,  and  she 
loved  to  see  the  paths  all  clipped  and  weeded  and 
raked.  Once  a  week,  a  black  man  would  come 
from  somewhere,  and  spend  the  whole  day  with 
Aunt  Nan,  mowing  the  lawn,  digging  the  vege 
table  garden,  and  weeding  the  flowers.  That  was 
a  glorious  day  for  Gilbert  and  for  Aunt  Nan. 
How  much  there  was  to  be  done.  They  all 
seemed  to  be  wrestling  with  the  whole  yard,  to 
turn  it  up,  to  bring  it  to  a  bright,  shiny  newness. 
At  the  end  of  the  day,  Gilbert  would  walk  about 
the  garden  on  the  gravelly  paths  with  Aunt  Nan 
to  survey  their  handiwork.  She  would  be  im 
mensely  contented.  Her  bright  black  eyes  would 
soften;  she  would  be  weary  and  her  hands  would 
be  dirty,  but  Gilbert  would  feel  the  peace  that 
radiated  from  her  at  the  sight  of  this  freshly  bur 
nished  garden.  The  grass  would  be  smooth  like  a 
carpet,  the  flower-beds  and  the  vegetable-garden 
all  dark  and  tumbled  with  their  upturned  earth. 
The  paths  would  be  straight  brown  indented 
tracks,  or,  where  they  went  around  the  house, 
beautifully  curved  tracks,  with  the  marks  of  the 

[331  ] 


rake  on  the  fine  earth  where  George  had  worked 
it  over.  During  the  week  the  grass  would  grow 
longer,  the  weeds  shoot  up  in  the  flower-beds,  the 
paths  become  bedraggled  at  the  edges,  the  grass 
grow  up  rank  on  the  lawns.  But  soon  Saturday 
would  come  with  George,  and  the  fine  renovation 
would  take  place  all  over  again. 

Aunt  Nan  was  neat  and  quick  in  her  movements. 
She  had  a  cold  scorn  for  dirty  faces  and  dirty 
hands,  and  Gilbert  sometimes  became  a  little 
weary  trying  to  satisfy  her  demands.  He  was  al 
ways  a  little  intimidated  by  her,  but  at  the  same 
time  fascinated  by  her  vibrancy,  her  restless  pas 
sion.  He  loved  to  see  her  coming  towards  him, 
because  he  knew  that  she  would  snatch  him  away 
to  something  interesting.  But  he  was  a  little 
fearful,  too;  subdued  by  that  decisiveness  that 
made  him  realize  how  little  what  he  wanted  would 
count.  She  did  not  kiss  or  fondle  Gilbert  much. 
She  would  take  him  on  her  lap  and  put  her  arms 
around  him. 

Mother  was  never  like  that.  She  did  not  seem 
to  know  what  she  wanted.  Every  incident  was  a 
crisis.  Gilbert  found  that  he  and  Olga  could  re 
sist  her  by  delaying.  Dirty  faces  could  be  grudg- 
[332] 


ingly  and  slowly  cleaned.  One  could  come  in  the 
utmost  disapproving  reluctance  when  one  was 
called.  Mother  was  always  distressed  that  you 
did  not  obey  her;  she  was  always  distressed  about 
what  to  do  with  you.  She  would  implore  you  to 
be  good,  and  you  would  be  good  with  a  certain 
chilly  haughtiness,  because  it  seemed  somewhat 
humiliating  to  see  Mother  so  distressed  and  un 
certain.  Olga  did  not  usually  obey,  but  kicked 
and  screamed.  Gilbert  soon  got  the  habit  of 
ignoring  his  mother's  expressed  desires  and  wear 
ing  out  her  decisiveness.  Then  he  would  be  left 
alone  to  follow  his  own  desires. 

That  yard,  which  Aunt  Nan  loved  so  much,  was 
for  Gilbert  a  domain,  a  principality.  It  was 
years  before  he  had  really  explored  it  thoroughly 
or  searched  out  all  its  delights.  At  first  it  was  a 
rich  and  bountiful  collection  of  all  the  things  that 
Gilbert  had  missed  in  the  back-street.  He  did  not 
know  that  he  had  missed  them,  but  now  that  he 
had  found  them,  something  down  very  deep  in 
him  told  him  that  this  was  what  his  restlessness 
and  sadness  had  craved. 

You  rushed  out  the  side-door — for  the  front 
door  was  just  as  heavily  interdicted  as  the  front 

[333] 


stairs — and  you  tumbled  into  a  bed  of  myrtles  and 
wistaria  which  climbed  out  of  the  flower-bed  in 
thick  stalks  and  grew  steadily  over  the  corner  of 
the  house.  Across  the  path  were  two  tall  pine 
trees,  whose  branches  brushed  Gilbert's  shutter  by 
his  bed  when  the  wind  blew  loud.  Beyond  the 
trees  lay  the  green,  unbroken  lawn,  covered  with 
velvety  grass  that  even  the  lawn-mower  could  not 
keep  from  growing  thick  and  soft  like  a  carpet. 
The  lawn  went  straight  up  towards  the  neighbor's 
fence,  but  just  before  it  reached  there  it  turned 
into  a  long  flower-bed,  with  rose-bushes  and 
tangled  flowery  vines  that  climbed  over  and  pre 
tended  that  there  was  no  fence  there  at  all.  To 
the  right,  and  up  near  the  street  corner  of  the  yard 
were  three  more  lordly  pines  set  in  a  triangle, 
which  Gilbert  had  promptly  named  "Three  Trees 
Grove."  The  floor  was  covered  with  needles. 
It  was  shady  and  spacious,  almost  as  big  as  Gil 
bert's  room.  It  could  be  turned  into  a  house,  or 
a  shop  or  a  church,  at  a  moment's  notice.  The  big 
trunks  stretching  up  above  Gilbert's  head  gave 
it  an  air  of  delightful  majesty,  and  he  could  not 
play  there  enough  with  Olga  and  Cousin  Ethel. 
At  the  other  end  of  the  broad  lawn  were  the 

[334] 


grape-arbors,  six  or  seven  lines  of  them,  where 
you  walked  between  the  overflowing  vines  and 
looked  longingly  at  the  green  bunches  which  took 
endless  seons,  all  through  the  long  golden  summer, 
to  ripen,  while  Gilbert  went  every  day  to  ex 
amine  them.  Behind  that  was  the  barn,  from 
which  the  horses  and  carriage  had  vanished,  though 
when  Grandfather  was  alive,  Garna  told  him, 
they  had  their  horses  and  Aunt  Nan  had  ridden 
one  of  them,  and  so  had  Uncle  Rob,  who  was 
far  off  in  Texas  now.  Gilbert  could  see  traces 
of  the  carriage  road  which  had  led  out  through  the 
side-gate  to  the  side-street,  but  which  was  now  all 
grass-grown.  The  barn  was  now  full  of  rakes 
and  hoes  and  wheel-barrows,  but  there  were  deep 
bins  where  still  remained  a  peck  or  two  of  oats 
and  a  measure,  and  there  was  a  manger  which 
swung  back  and  forth  from  the  stall  to  the  bin, 
so  you  could  fill  it  and  then  turn  it  in  to  the  horse. 
Gilbert  wished  that  there  were  still  horses  to  play 
with,  but  it  was  fun  turning  the  manger  and  mak 
ing  Olga  and  Ethel  pretend  to  be  horses. 

If  you  went  on  beyond  the  barn  you  came  to  a 
clump  of  currant  and  gooseberry  bushes  which  ran 
out  in  a  thin  line  to  the  fence,  which  by  this  time 

[335] 


had  lost  its  rose-bushes  and  become  a  pricky  tangle 
of  blackberries.  Enclosed  by  the  blackberries  and 
the  currants  was  the  broad  expanse  of  the  vege 
table  garden,  with  corn  in  summer  that  Gilbert 
could  get  quite  lost  in,  and  an  amazing  variety  of 
good  vegetables  to  eat.  The  vegetable  garden 
ran  up  to  Uncle  Marcus's  barn  and  his  garden. 
Straight  down  back  of  Garna's  house,  through  the 
middle  of  the  yard,  ran  a  path,  part  way  through 
a  grape-arbor  of  its  own,  and  then  past  the  cur 
rant  bushes.  At  the  end  of  the  garden  it  joined 
a  path  in  Uncle  Marcus's  yard.  Along  the  foot 
of  the  path,  where  it  passed  the  garden,  was  a  row 
of  rhubarb,  and  on  the  other  side  Aunt  Nan's 
sweet-peas,  which  she  planted  every  spring.  On 
the  other  side  of  the  path  was  an  open  meadow 
where  the  grass  was  not  cut,  and  where  Gilbert 
sometimes  lay  on  cool  summer  days  and  looked  up 
at  great  white  clouds  floating  past  in  the  blue  sky. 
Nearer  the  house  you  came  to  a  wilderness  of  fruit- 
trees,  pears  of  all  kinds  and  apples,  and  as  you 
approached  the  street  the  yard  broke  into  flower 
beds  and  shrubs  and  bushes.  Close  to  the  house 
grew  lilies-of-the-valley,  and  a  curious  ribbon- 
grass  which  Aunt  Nan  could  take  between  her 

[336] 


fingers  and  blow  shrill  whistles  on.  Along  the 
path  which  went  past  the  dining-room  window 
were  beds  of  pink  and  white  peonies  and  tall  white 
lilies  which  had  a  smell  so  sweet  that  Gilbert  felt 
almost  faint  when  he  touched  them.  And  along 
the  whole  side  of  the  yard  was  a  beautiful 
japonica  hedge,  with  its  white  and  red  flowers  in 
the  spring,  which  turned  into  sweetly  smelling 
green  balls  in  the  summer.  There  were  great 
maples  interspersed  in  the  hedge  that  threw  down 
their  keys  in  the  spring.  And  all  along  the  front 
of  the  yard,  close  to  the  house,  ran  a  white  wooden 
fence  just  within  which  was  a  line  of  graceful 
black-walnut  trees,  with  their  thin  green  clustered 
leaves  and  the  green  nuts  which  fell  in  heaps  on 
the  ground.  Aunt  Nan  and  Gilbert  would  col 
lect  them  in  sacks  and  put  them  in  the  barn. 
There  they  would  grow  all  black,  so  that  you 
could  strip  off  the  covering  and  find  the  crinkled 
nutshell  within.  Then  you  cracked  them  on  a 
stone. 

The  yard  was  wonderful  to  Gilbert.  The  win 
ter  was  one  long  torpor  when,  as  he  played  with 
his  blocks  in  the  great  stretch  of  sunlight  in 
Mother's  room,  the  days  passed  almost  in  a  dream. 

[337] 


It  was  only  when  spring  came,  and  he  could  run 
about  and  see  the  buds  and  the  flowers  come  out 
one  after  another,  that  he  felt  alive  again.  And 
it  was  good  in  the  endless  summer  days  to  have 
so  much  to  attend  to.  He  could  be  playing  in 
Three  Trees  Grove,  and  yet  have  running  in  an 
undercurrent  of  his  mind  the  sense  of  the  gar 
den  or  the  japonica  hedge,  or  the  manger  in  the 
barn.  He  could  go  down  to  the  cherry-tree  to  see 
if  the  cherries  were  ripe,  or  to  the  currant-bushes, 
or  he  could  prick  his  fingers  on  the  rose-bushes,  or 
get  himself  stuck  in  the  gum  of  the  pine-trees. 
The  yard  was  a  world,  and  only  very  dimly  did  he 
imagine  anything  beyond  it.  What  his  mother 
did  in  the  kitchen  or  about  the  house  only  very 
dimly  concerned  him.  What  they  had  to  live  on 
never  entered  his  mind.  His  sorrows  were  con 
cerned  almost  entirely  with  the  rebellions  of  Olga, 
or  the  calamities  of  weather  which  would  keep 
them  all  home  from  a  walk  to  the  kind  lady  who 
lived  up  the  street  and  gave  them  cookies  when 
they  went  to  see  her.  Or  the  hornets  and  yellow- 
jackets.  Sometimes  on  very  hot  days,  when 
Mother  kept  them  in  the  darkened  back  parlor  and 
the  big  clock  ticked  menacingly,  insistently  at 

[338] 


them,  and  Gilbert  felt  sleepy  and  could  not  go 
to  sleep,  the  tsedium  vitae  would  overwhelm  him 
in  a  great  drenching  wave.  He  was  suddenly 
conscious  of  time,  endlessly  flowing  and  yet  some 
how  dreadfully  static.  Nothing  was  ever  going 
to  happen  again;  he  was  as  if  alive  in  a  tomb. 
The  flies  buzzed;  the  clock  ticked;  Mother  was 
taking  an  exhausted  nap;  Aunt  Nan  and  Garna 
were  away  for  a  vacation.  The  world  was  a  great 
vacuum  with  nothing  to  experience  and  nothing  to 
do. 

And  if  a  summer  afternoon  could  produce  so 
appalling  a  sense  of  eternity,  what  must  heaven 
be  like,  where  you  went  so  infallibly  when  you 
were  dead*?  Either  because  lovely  Garna  and 
mild  Miss  Fogg  had  kept  Gilbert  from  the  terrors 
of  hell,  or  it  was  his  natural  ego,  it  never  occurred 
to  him  that  he  was  not  destined  for  heaven,  or 
that  there  was  any  way  of  avoiding  it.  And  the 
thought  of  eternal  life  seemed  to  fuse  itself  with 
the  long  and  empty  summer  afternoon.  The 
tedium  vitce  was  transmuted  into  the  colossal  ennui 
of  heaven.  Not  as  a  pearly  municipality  of 
golden  streets  and  white-robed  choirs  did  Gilbert 
imagine  heaven,  but  always  in  the  guise  of  those 
[  339  ] 


white  clouds  on  which  God  rode.  He  saw  him 
self  clearly,  seated  infinitely  high  above  the  earth, 
to  which  he  should  never  be  able  to  come  again. 
Perhaps  there  was  the  intimation  of  a  harp,  but 
what  seized  Gilbert's  imagination  was  the  vast 
emptiness  of  the  space  around  him,  the  disorienta- 
tion  of  everything.  Time  and  space  were  no 
longer  fluid  and  mobile,  but  frozen;  and  in  the 
hot,  sticky  afternoon,  his  slightly  feverish  body, 
all  alert  and  sensitive  at  every  pore  of  time  that 
dripped  past  him,  would  be  terribly  conscious  of 
this  horror  that  awaited  him,  of  this  immobile  time 
in  empty  space.  It  was  not  the  dark  or  stillness 
that  he  feared.  On  the  contrary,  he  saw  this  fu 
ture  state  as  floating  in  the  clearest,  most  luminous 
light.  On  certain  days,  when  he  happened  to  look 
at  the  sky,  he  would  see  just  that  pale  infinite  blue 
into  which  you  could  look  on  and  on  and  never 
reach  the  end.  When  it  was  really  blue  or  cloudy, 
it  curved  comfortingly  over  you,  near  and  definite 
like  a  bowl.  But  when  it  was  of  a  certain  pale 
ness,  the  bowl  seemed  to  have  been  removed  and 
you  looked  through,  out  into  nothingness.  And  if 
in  this  nothingness  there  were  white  majestic 
clouds  floating,  that  looked  solid  as  if  they  could 

[340] 


bear  you  away,  then  over  Gilbert  would  sweep 
again  this  ennui  of  heaven,  lost  and  forgotten  per 
haps  since  that  last  afternoon  in  the  darkened  par 
lor.  And  a  vague  feeling  of  homelessness  and  of 
fear  would  fall  upon  him.  His  play  would  flag 
until  the  clouds  drifted  away  again  and  he  forgot 
that  they  had  come. 

The  first  break  in  Gilbert's  world  came  when  his 
mother  decided  that  he  and  Olga  ought  to  go  to 
school.  Gilbert  was  seven  years  old,  and  when 
his  mother  told  him  rather  worriedly  about  it,  he 
felt  at  first  rather  pleased  at  the  idea  of  something 
so  important.  What  would  they  teach  him? 
Mother  said  Miss  Waldron  would  teach  him.  He 
knew  how  to  read  and  write  and  he  could  spell 
all  the  words  he  wrote.  He  read  all  the  books  he 
was  given  and  sometimes  looked  into  Hawthorne's 
Wonder  Tales,  and  read  a  page  or  two.  When  he 
went  back  for  the  book,  however,  he  would  for 
get  where  he  had  left  off.  So  he  would  read  a 
page  anywhere.  What  did  it  matter?  He  read 
his  Bible  in  the  same  haphazard  way.  He  knew 
his  multiplication  table,  and  he  liked  to  recite  it. 
And  he  knew  all  about  the  calendar  and  the 
hymn-book.  Most  of  these  things  he  had  known 

[341] 


since  he  was  four  or  five,  and  what  good  did  they 
do  him? 

But  in  the  morning  he  liked  taking  Olga  by  the 
hand,  and  leading  her  out  the  gate  under  the  big 
black-walnut  trees,  and  down  the  street.  Mother 
always  kissed  them  good-bye  with  such  a  serious 
and  anxious  air  that  Gilbert  felt  he  was  setting  out 
on  a  genuine  mission.  At  the  crossing  he  would 
restrain  Olga  from  rushing  ahead;  then  he  would 
carefully  look  up  and  down  the  street  to  see  if 
there  were  any  horses  and  wagons  coming.  Then 
he  would  dash  across,  pulling  Olga  precipitately 
behind  him.  They  would  go  along  the  upper 
green,  under  the  great  railroad  bridge,  and  come 
to  Miss  Waldron's. 

To  Gilbert  the  school  was  an  enormous  joke. 
He  could  not  take  Miss  Waldron  seriously.  Her 
tall,  bony  frame  and  her  sad,  fierce  eyes  touched 
no  springs  of  affection  in  him.  A  lesson  or  two 
unlocked  all  the  latent  cruelty  in  him.  She  was 
there  to  teach  Gilbert  and  Olga  and  the  half-dozen 
other  little  children  who  came  to  the  school-room 
over  the  kitchen,  and  she  was  determined  to  teach 
them.  She  knew  that  children  under  seven 
needed  to  be  taught  to  read  and  write  and  spell. 
[342] 


So  she  gritted  her  teeth,  and  came  every  morning  to 
her  hard  and  bitter  work. 

But  Gilbert  by  that  time  had  read  so  many 
books  at  home  that  it  seemed  absurd  that  he  should 
be  taught  to  read,  and  he  would  rattle  through 
the  lesson  while  the  younger  children  fidgeted  and 
then  tried  painfully  to  puzzle  it  out.  Gilbert 
could  spell,  too,  and  he  raced  through  the  words, 
and  when  he  was  asked  the  meaning  of  words  he 
would  say  that  "retire"  meant  "go  to  bed,"  be 
cause  he  had  seen  it  mean  that  in  a  book  he  had 
read.  And  Miss  Waldron  would  say  he  was  a 
saucy  boy,  and  plead  with  him  to  answer  nicely. 
Then  he  would  mimic  her,  and  watch  her  fight 
back  the  temper  in  her  sad,  fierce  eyes.  She  would 
stand  him  in  the  comer,  with  his  back  to  the  class, 
and  he  would  look  round  and  wink  at  the  other 
children  to  make  them  laugh.  Miss  Waldron's 
sisters  would  come  up  from  the  kitchen  below, 
where  they  were  baking,  and  beg  Gilbert  not  to 
make  the  teacher  so  unhappy,  and  promise  him  a 
cookie  if  he  would  be  good.  And  Gilbert,  drunk 
with  power,  would  refuse  everything,  and  ride  his 
high  horse  until  the  mill-whistles  blew  twelve 
o'clock,  and  they  all  went  home  for  the  day. 
[343] 


£  6  5  3  8 


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